


Our Own Pace

by Im_The_Doctor (Bofur1)



Series: The Pacemakers [35]
Category: Transformers Generation One
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Concerned Friends, Cultural References, Death Threats, Depression, Developing Friendships, Flashbacks, Forced Bonding, Gestalt (Transformers), Getting to Know Each Other, Hospitalization, Major Character Injury, Medical Procedures, Mid-Canon, Missions Gone Wrong, Multi, Non-Consensual Body Modification, Psychological Trauma, Racist Language, Repressed Memories, Social Issues, Spark Bond, Strategy & Tactics, Surprises, Victim Blaming
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-29
Updated: 2016-01-12
Packaged: 2018-03-26 09:08:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 20
Words: 32,962
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3845227
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bofur1/pseuds/Im_The_Doctor
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Decepticon threats seem the same as usual when the Autobots roll out, but by the time they return, everything has changed; a major accident has revealed a powerful secret about some of their own. Most think the war will end now, but a lone Bot wonders if this "happy accident" is an even greater peril than Megatron.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Cybertronian Time Measurements:  
> Klik - 1 Second  
> Orn - 1 Day  
> Vorn - 1 Year
> 
> Pace - A company or herd of mules; in my headcanon, a family of Minibots, due to their charming natures

 

This battle was _not_ going in the Autobots’ favor. Explosions rattled the atmosphere, smoke and rain caused the air to haze over, and bits of metal and shrapnel spattered across the ground, just as usual. The big difference: with the latest technology he’d stolen, Megatron was able to predict the Autobots’ every move and he pounced on them before they could perform it.

“What in the Pit is this tech?!” Brawn demanded, leaning against the boulder where he was taking cover from the bombs. Bumblebee, hunkered down next to him, peeked out just in time to see Megatron whirl around, seize what looked like a chunk of air and hurl it toward a tree. Seconds later, Mirage uncloaked, curling into himself as energon oozed from his neck and waist.

“I don’t know, Brawn, but whatever it is, it’s making Megatron unstoppable! He should never have been able to catch Mirage like that, not in this rain!”

A streak of red somersaulted over the top of the boulder and landed between them, groaning in pain even as he struggled to get up.

“CJ,” Brawn gasped, lending him a hand.

“I’m fine,” Cliffjumper coughed, shrugging Brawn off as soon as he was upright. “What’re you two doing back here? We need you out there.”

“We need to retreat, Cliff!” Bumblebee argued. “We’re being slaughtered.”

Cliffjumper ex-vented harshly, forced a grin to his face and replied, “That’s why we need to give it all we’ve got before we’re dragged back to base for repairs!”

Bumblebee opened his mouth to protest again, but Cliffjumper was already cutting past the edge of the boulder and rushing for Megatron once more.

Brawn rolled his optics and planted his feet more firmly into the mud, wrapping his arms around the boulder and hefting it up, hurling it at one of the Seekers. Whichever one it was—it too difficult to tell in the rain—shrieked in fury and pain as it spiraled downward.

“C’mon, Bee. If Cliff won’t go back with us, we might as well go forward with him!”

Without his cover, Bumblebee didn’t have much choice but to obey, zipping past Brawn and lunging at the Decepticon overlord. As he did so, he saw Windcharger, Huffer, and Gears in his peripheral, ready to do the same. Had Bumblebee been given time, reassurance would have strengthened his resolve in the pace’s plan…

But he received no such gift. Before he could, he felt an intense, unseen force snatch at his frame, jerking it sideways. Windcharger, impulsive and impatient Windcharger, had magnetized his arms and was inadvertently drawing his fellow Minibots toward him in a neck-wrenching heave.

Was it _really_ inadvertent? Flattened against Windcharger’s side, Bumblebee had only a few kliks to realize what the new plan was before they plowed into Megatron—a six-mech mass of nearly indestructible armor.

Megatron howled as they tumbled helm over heelstrut with him, plastering him to the ground beneath their sheer bulk. Bumblebee could feel his pace-mates struggling to lift their fists against the Con, but they were unable. Ozone crackled and hissed around them and then Bumblebee felt himself transforming _against his will_.

“What’s happening?!” he cried as he was folded into vehicle mode and thrown upward, repeating his words over wails from Gears and Huffer. Bumblebee felt the vibrations through his own frame and tried to cry out with them, but then his voice was simply _gone_. His systems churned as he felt metal where it wasn’t supposed to be—crushing into his doors and bumpers, paralyzing him in his alt. mode.

“Help me!” he howled with the others, his returned voice unimportant. Even in their obvious distress, their voices synced and smoothed, almost seeming to come from one frame. The vibrating and ozone scent were stronger than ever, threatening to overwhelm all senses, but one thing outweighed even those things. The entire pace screamed in agony as they felt the worst of intrusions—each spark chamber buckled and then gave way, their sparks unprotected from Windcharger’s magnetic pull. They raced through whatever makeshift conduit had been formed in this terrible moment and crashed into each other, pooling in an explosion of unsaid emotions and naked secrets.

All others present on or above the battlefield openly gaped at the new combiner as he lurched unstably, the only balance provided by Megatron, who lay shrieking underneath the purple-orange left leg. The red-blue right leg slipped for purchase in the mud, the red-black right arm threw itself out for balance, and the red-silver left arm clutched at the yellow torso. The green-gray face was strained; when its mouth opened, a seamless blend of familiar voices revealed utter terror in a scream that might have caused Primus himself to shiver.

Starscream, mistaking the wail for a roar of fury, let out his own screech. “Decepticons! Retreat!” As much as they disliked their second-in-command, the Cons had no qualms whatsoever about obeying, scrambling away from the Autobots they had been so close to conquering. The gestalt saw jets passing near his helm and hissed, probably believing that this new development was their fault. He made a snatch at Thundercracker and sent him spinning out of control. Skywarp caught Thundercracker before he hit the ground and managed to escape, so the Minibot combiner turned his optics toward the Decepticon leader beneath his foot.

“You,” he hissed with the Minibot voices. “You, Megatron…caused this.”

“No!” Megatron yelped, gasping as the foot relieved its pressure, only to be taken into the red-and-silver Windcharger hand.

“You, with your technology, caused this. We…I…don’t know how…but you will reverse it!” he shouted thunderously. For the first time in quite a long time, Megatron _quailed_. When he received no answer, the combiner loosened his grip just enough to study the steel disc secured to Megatron’s chest—the stolen technology. Snarling, he closed his hand once more and squeezed just enough that the disc shattered.

“Before we return to normal, tell us,” he continued, Cliffjumper and Brawn emerging in his feral tones, “why we should not crush _you_ now.”

“Minibots!” Optimus called worriedly. The combiner tried to turn at the voice of his Prime, but his red-and-blue Gears leg was not ready for the transition of balance. He overcompensated, the Gears leg buckled against the purple-and-orange Huffer leg, and the rest of the frame went down. Megatron took off as soon as the Windcharger hand lost hold of him, streaking into the sky without making a single taunting remark or threat about the next battle.

Optimus pulled Ratchet to his feet, escorting him toward the huge body taking up most of the battlefield. The rest of the Autobots—those who could stand, at least—crowded around them as Ratchet crouched by the Brawn-like face.

“Are you…can you transform?” he tried, outspoken by a harsh humming of magnetism. Transform they did. Ratchet went from crouching to kneeling as Brawn’s small form appeared at his feet.

Optimus opened his mouth to speak, only to be brushed aside with a quiet but panicked, “Sorry, sir”. Hauler moved to Brawn’s other side, supporting his neck so they could meet optics.

“Brawn,” Hauler whispered in strangled tones. “What happened? How did you do that?”

Brawn stared at him for a long moment, mouth open as though to respond but no words came. Instead he stiffened, his hands clenching at his sides, and his optics shifted to the sky before they flickered out.


	2. Chapter 2

_Where…where am I?_

“You’re in the med bay,” a familiar voice answered, unusually stiff. “And you’d better be glad Ratchet got you here in time.”

Bumblebee forced his optics online and spotted the mech sitting by his berthside.

“Brawn,” Bee gasped out. Immediately Brawn leaned forward and snatched up his hand.

“Hey, Bee, it’s okay, I’m here—don’t go into shock again, alright?”

Bumblebee stared at his hand, at Brawn’s fingers interlocked with his. “We… _combined_ , Brawn,” he said in a hushed voice. “When Charger magnetized us—”

Sighing tersely, Brawn withdrew his hand and hugged his arms against his chassis.

Bumblebee was almost afraid to ask, but he did anyway. “Where are the others?” Brawn made a morose motion over his shoulder and Bumblebee struggled to sit up, gasping as he found the rest of his pace, laid out on the berths to his right.

“According to Ratchet, we’ve been in stasis for about an orn and a half,” Brawn murmured, not looking up at the scout. “Most of them haven’t woken up. Gears once, but only for a few kliks.”

“We weren’t meant to do that,” Bumblebee quavered. “Brawn. It felt like _dying_ —”

“I’m not ready to hear how _you_ felt,” Brawn cut in, rocking slightly in his chair. “I—all of your processors in mine—” Releasing his vents in a hiss, Brawn leapt to his feet and rushed for the door. “I’m gonna get some energon!”

Bumblebee whimpered lightly but remained where he was, staring at the ceiling and trying to process the events of his last online cycle. He heard the rest of his pace stirring one by one, studying the others around them before realizing they were in the same room. Their forced gestalt bond had, at least for now, spoiled the company. Each made their excuses to Bee as they passed and he would respond with a wordless nod.

Ratchet, having gone for recharge, returned and instantly panicked when he saw all but one of his patients had vanished. “Bumblebee! Where did they go?!”

“Brawn went for some energon, CJ to the shooting range,” Bumblebee murmured as he sat up and turned so his legs dangled off the berth’s side. “Gears wanted some time in the wash-racks. Charger left for a drive. Huff, I don’t even know.” Digging his palms into his wet optics, Bumblebee pleaded, “You have to do something, Ratchet! Something’s wrong with me, and I’m not just talking about the obvious. I don’t know what to do with myself!”

Ratchet didn’t speak for a long time, staring at the floor and then eventually turning and departing through the same doors as the others. Bumblebee felt helplessness mix with his grief, but to his utter disbelief, some of it was foreign. Not all of it belonged to him. Standing unsteadily, Bee made his way to a mirror, cursing without ire when he found it too high for him to use. Searching out a stool, he clambered onto it. His blue optics were discolored around the edges from too much coolant he refused to discharge. After many long kliks, he stood on the tips of his feet and unlatched his chest armor, gasping softly when he saw what he had feared.

His natural spark color was, of course, gold. Now it too was discolored, strands light swirling around it in different hues.

“Green for Brawn,” Bee whispered, startling as the green strand reacted to the name, fluctuating its hold on his golden orb. Terrified but entranced by the sight, he put in, “Red for Cliffjumper. Blue for Gears. Violet for Huffer. Silver for Windcharger.” By the time he finished, he was sobbing out the words. The multicolored spark-strands felt the pain radiating from the golden orb and reacted with their own, balancing out and yet tipping Bumblebee’s emotions so far he nearly fell from the stool. He clutched at the wall, whimpering brokenly as the glass in front of him blurred.

“Bee?” a voice spoke from below. Bumblebee went ramrod-straight, his chest armor snapping back into place as he turned and wobbled for balance. Below him stood a small form, wringing his hands. Bumblebee blinked hard a few times to rid his gaze of coolant.

“Spike?”

“Ratchet called my dad,” the boy said timidly. “He said something had happened to you, that you needed me.”

“I certainly can’t turn to my pace for help,” Bumblebee lamented as he stumbled back to the ground, narrowly missing his friend where he landed.

“Why not?” Spike coaxed.

Sinking down onto the bottom step of the stool, Bumblebee spilled out everything that had happened on the battlefield. Spike listened in disbelief which swiftly became awe when Bumblebee briefly revealed the rainbow of colors surrounding his spark.

“Is there any way to fix it?” Spike asked when Bee had finished.

“No!” Bee wailed. “W-When you have a spark bond, it…never goes away—not fully, at least! There’s always a strand or two. I’m not partnered, I’m not a twin, I’ve never had a spark-bond of _any_ kind before! I don’t know how to handle it! I’m not supposed to be part of a gestalt—”

“Is a pace any different?” Spike inquired.

“By the Allspark, yes!” Bumblebee burst out. “It’s like—like—what was that earth saying? The one about fruit!”

“Comparing apples to oranges?”

“Yes. A pace is, well, a family. We’re a family…or at least we were. Now we’re… _merged_.” Bumblebee shivered, bowing his helm mournfully. “They all left because they couldn’t stand to be in the same room together. I’ve always been afraid this would happen and then somehow I got shoved into that body with them and then it happened!”

Spike looked contemplative. “Bumblebee, you remember when Wheeljack and my dad put me in that makeshift Autobot body?”

“Because your regular body was hurt,” Bumblebee agreed, wondering where he was going with this.

“I didn’t want that body at all. I felt too large and wobbly and exposed,” Spike admitted. “But I ended up doing a little bit of good with it. Maybe you can do a bit of good with this gestalt thing.”

“How can I when my pace—my gestalt-ma—my _pace_ -mates can’t even look at each other? Or at me? Without even meaning to, we…” Bumblebee’s voice dropped to a whisper. “… _violated_ each other.”

Spike settled on the base of Bumblebee’s foot and rested his chin in one hand. “Well, you could do what people do in the movies: set up a meeting with each of them, but don’t tell them that the others will be there.”

“They watch movies too; they’ll never fall for that,” Bumblebee said gloomily.

“Well, how about _I_ ask them?” Spike suggested. “They’d be expecting you.”

“You’re my best friend. They’ll know I sent you. Nothing like that is going to work, Spike.”

“Wow, you really _have_ merged with them,” Spike declared crossly. “You’re already starting to sound like Huffer!” He obviously regretted the words as soon as he spoke them. “Sorry, Bee. I just…hate to see you like this.”

“I hate to feel like this, Spike.”

“We have to get them into a room somehow!” Spike cried, standing and walking briskly back and forth. “This gestalt bond thing ought to be bringing you closer together—” A sudden crash from outside the medical bay caught his attention, but it quickly shifted back to Bumblebee as the scout hollered wordlessly in pain, clutching at his chest.

“Bee? What’s wrong?!” Spike demanded. The automatic med bay doors opened for a blur of colors. When the tangle stopped rolling, Spike could see it was Windcharger and Cliffjumper, the former shielding his face and the latter with fists already flying.


	3. Chapter 3

“Charger, this is _your_ fault!” Cliffjumper shouted, straddling his fellow Minibot’s chest for the best angle at his face. “You magnetized us; you drew us close enough to be combined!”

“T-To defeat Megatron!” Windcharger wailed, thrashing underneath him, trying to escape, but Cliffjumper had him pinned against a stack of crates and he was finding no place to go.

A sudden hoarse cry caught Cliffjumper’s attention. When he looked to his right, he saw Bumblebee still in the med bay, now on a stool rather than the berth. He was doubled over his knees, inexplicably tormented.

“Bee?” Cliffjumper called, perplexed, just before Windcharger flipped him off and kicked him. A flare of rage, tinted with odd tingles of pain, brought Cliffjumper back up, pulling Windcharger down by the back of the neck and slamming him face first into the floor.

“If I injure a member of this _gestalt_ badly enough,” Cliffjumper snarled, squeezing Windcharger’s neck, “we won’t be able to combine again. You’re suffering this for a good cause, Windcharger.”

Coughing harshly, Windcharger clamped his hands around Cliffjumper’s, trying to pry them off.

“Hey!”

Again Cliffjumper looked up and saw Spike waving frantically at him.

“Stop, Cliffjumper! Look what you’re doing to Bumblebee!”

“I’m not doin’ _anything_ to him,” Cliffjumper barked back, but from the way Bee had his helm between his knees, he wasn’t so sure. Not wanting to look any longer at Bee’s bizarre suffering, Cliffjumper refocused on the squirming mech beneath him, keeping one hand around his throat and punching him with the other. He tried to feel his usual grim satisfaction when he drew blood, but something was wrong. Instead he felt increasingly ill and panicked, like he couldn’t breathe, like he was rocking back and forth or running, running, running—

“Cliffjumper! Stop that _right now!_ ”

Cliffjumper yelped as a solid frame barreled into him from behind, taking him off Windcharger and into the wall. When he turned over, he found Huffer’s face bare inches from his own. The engineer’s optics were deep blue chasms of fear and he was jarring both of them with his quaking.

“I can _feel_ it,” Huffer panted. “We can all feel what you’re doing!” Urgently he gestured to the door, where Brawn limped into view, hefting the hyperventilating Gears against his shoulder.

Cliffjumper hesitated, letting this news sink in. In fact, the longer he simply sat there, venting more carefully, the more his discomfort eased. He watched the other Minibots intently and they seemed to benefit from it too.

“How…Why…?” Cliffjumper tried to question, but Bumblebee interrupted.

“I think you already know, Cliff.”

“Our sparks,” Brawn concurred softly.

“Don’t you mean ‘spark’, singular?” Gears muttered, pushing away from Brawn as though loathing any more touch. Cliffjumper followed Gears’ example, scrambling out of Huffer’s grip and to his feet.

“I gotta get out of here!” As he went for the door, Cliffjumper stumbled and nearly went back to the floor underneath the pressure of powerful anguish. It disoriented him and he whirled back around, wondering who it belonged to.

“Please, don’t,” Bumblebee begged, giving himself away. “We can’t avoid each other forever.”

“No…b-but I have to while I can,” Cliffjumper countered hoarsely, backing up until he was pressed against the door. It didn’t open, much to his astonishment. When he jumped for the small window set into the door, he glimpsed Ratchet turning away with determined features.

“Primus. That—that—that _medic_ actually locked us in,” Cliffjumper announced numbly. “What does he think he’s doing?” He glanced over his shoulder and saw the rest of his pace studying the floor as though it were something fascinating.

“Maybe,” Spike piped up nervously, “maybe he wants you to work out what happened.”

“We don’t need to work it out,” Gears grumbled. “It happened. That’s all.”

“You know that’s not the extent of it,” Huffer argued. “In fact, it probably goes farther than we even know! Something _worse_ will probably come out of it!”

“Unless we ‘work it out’,” Brawn sighed. Approaching the berth he had occupied before, he hoisted himself up and placed his chin in his hands. “So…do all of us even know what happened?”

There was an awkward silence and then a round of nods.

“Okay. Um…do we know how?”

“Charger’s magnetism,” Cliffjumper spat, glaring at Windcharger, who scowled back and folded his arms across his chest.

“I thought it was Megatron’s technology,” Huffer proclaimed, edging his way between the two. “Or maybe a combination of both.”

“How doesn’t matter,” Gears declared savagely. “All I know is I want it fixed!”

“You also know it can’t be,” Bumblebee sighed. “Our sparks… _spark_ …can’t be separated now. We’re…one.”

Another tense silence, but beneath it there was so much more. Now that the words had been spoken, he could feel what the others had starkly—the presence in his chest, twisting and curling around the edges of his spark in the vilest of ways…and, though he didn’t dare admit it, almost in a comforting way too.

Cliffjumper’s processor drifted to how things had been before the battle. Most of them, if not all, had considered each other family. Wasn’t this simply taking things to the next level?

“Maybe we don’t have to be one,” he mumbled. “Maybe we’re just…y’know, one _unit_.”

“What d’you mean?” Windcharger asked.

“Well, the other gestalts we’ve seen seem to function just fine,” Cliffjumper pointed out. “They’re close and everything—like a pace, just closer than one. A gestalt, a pace…We can be both, right?”

“But we weren’t meant to be both!”

“You could talk to someone about it,” Spike suggested, flinching when he received a chorus of groans and dirty looks. “I mean someone who has a spark bond. Like…the twins.”

Brawn swore and shook his helm. “Sideswipe and Sunstreaker would never take us seriously! They’d probably make _jokes_ about it!”

“I wasn’t talking about _those_ twins, Brawn,” Spike protested. “I meant the other ones. I meant Prowl and Bluestreak.”

“Prowl’s too stiff and Bluestreak…we’d never get a word in edgewise,” Brawn disputed.

“So that leaves two options, I think: talk to each other or talk to someone who’s in a gestalt,” Spike said simply.

“A Con? No fragging way!” Cliffjumper snarled, backed up by fierce nods of disagreement by all but one. Huffer shrilly drew in his vents, causing the others to glance at him sharply.

“We don’t need someone who’s in a gestalt,” Huffer stated. “We need someone who’s _been_ in a gestalt.” At their blank looks, Huffer ex-vented slowly, rubbing his chamfron as he concluded: “Hauler.”


	4. Chapter 4

Hauler sank shakily onto his berth, holding his hands over his chest and venting deeply.

_The Minibots form a combiner now. Cybertron below me…_

“Lord Primus, was this _always_ bound to happen?” he muttered. “Almost as soon as I find a friend in both Huffer and Brawn, they’re taken and forced to reform into what I used to be. Did I bring it on them somehow?” He glanced toward his ceiling, straining his audials, but no answer came from his Creator. Even as he realized what he ought to do next, Hauler found his momentary purpose just a small victory.

Sighing heavily, he stood and made his way down the halls of the Ark to one of the rarely-used rooms. Only a select few knew about it since it was an incomplete project, but Trailbreaker and Mirage had been coerced by Hound to let Hauler in on it due to his construction background.

“Teletraan,” Hauler called as he entered the room and locked the door behind him, “activate Field Force Mystique. Access Code: Onyx Prime 4227.”

Hauler flinched just a little, shielding his optics as blue and orange lights burst online above and beneath him, spreading through the floor plating and the walls. A deep thrum vibrated through his frame and he couldn’t help but be a bit awed by it, as he had always been with any masterpiece he’d had a part in making.

“What’s the purpose of this?” he’d asked as he’d fiddled with wiring in one of the wall panels not too long ago.

“It’s mostly for homesickness,” Hound replied, patting Mirage on the shoulder. “And also just in case you miss some mechs or femmes you love.”

“Be careful wiring that series of slots there,” Mirage added quickly, trying to take the attention off his famous longing for Cybertron. “That’s where the access to memory cores will be stored.”

“ _Awaiting further instruction_ ,” Teletraan One broke into Hauler’s thoughts.

“Access Memory Core: Road Hauler,” Hauler commanded quietly. “Private Code: Autonomous Maximus 8412.” After a short pause he added, “And please erase records of the following conversation when I unlock the door.”

Teletraan answered with an understanding beep and then the activation process began, shimmering sparks of light sweeping from the floor upward, swarming and fusing together into blobs. Hauler watched with his spark rising into his throat as the shapes sharpened and took on bright colors—to him, even brighter than the background currently taking on the form of their greatest project.

“Took you long enough.”

Hauler laughed weakly, waving a little at Mixmaster, who grinned widely in return despite his previous remark.

“No doubt he’s been busy with other projects,” Hook cut in, eyeing Hauler with a slightly critical gaze. “Haven’t you?”

“I’ve been trying,” Hauler agreed, suddenly feeling a little shy. “But it’s nothing like this,” he added, sweeping a hand around them at the backdrop of the Crystal City. “Building is difficult with the materials I have right now.”

“Well, let me whip up a little something for you!” Mixmaster urged. “I’m sure I can find a way to work with what you’ve got.”

“Even better, I could probably find what he needs somewhere else,” Scavenger piped up.

“You’re thoughtful,” Hauler whispered, his optics trailing over their eager faces. Drawing in his vents sharply, he turned on his heelstrut and folded his hands together, using tactile tactics to compose himself as he often had for eons.

“Hey, Roady…um, _can_ we help?” Scavenger asked a bit more hesitantly than before.

“I was hoping you could. I need advice.” When he glanced over his shoulder, Hauler saw exactly what he had imagined he would: all holographic optics turned to Scrapper, who crossed his arms expectantly.

“Alright, what’s the problem?”

“What do you do,” Hauler began, trying to find a good wording for his question, “when a construct is reformed in a way you _never_ would have expected?”

“Well, is it a good reformation or a bad one?”

“Most people would consider it…good, I think,” Hauler half-dodged the question.

“But you don’t?”

“Not really.”

“Well, scrap it and start over then,” Bonecrusher exclaimed. “If it’s not turning out the way you want it to, the end goal you wanted isn’t achieved.”

“But I—I can’t scrap it,” Hauler stammered. “Because it…it’s a…relational project, if you understand.”

Hook’s visor ignited in what Hauler recognized as disbelief. “Roady! You aren’t secretly a Conjunx Endura, are you?”

Hauler pressed his hands over his face in embarrassment at both the old nickname and the assumption, his following cry muffled. “No! I wouldn’t hide that from you.”

“You think you know someone…” Hook insisted. His words almost immediately sobered Hauler, who gave a brief nod.

“That’s just it. Two of my friends and some others they consider their kin have just been changed so drastically that I’m not sure even they know who they’ve become.”

“How is this your problem? Why can’t they work it out on their own?”

Hauler was a bit taken aback by Scavenger’s question. “I want to be there for them. I’m hoping this change will end up being good despite what I’m thinking.”

“Why are you so worried about this when everyone else might think it’s a blessing?”

“I come to you for advice and yet _you’re_ asking all the questions,” Hauler joked feebly. At their still-expectant pause, he glanced toward the door and then at the floor, murmuring, “I…guess I’m basing it on my own experience.”

“This change has happened to you? Well, why didn’t you say so?!” Bonecrusher demanded. “You can help them adapt to what’s happening to them—”

“I know I can,” Hauler burst out. “But I don’t want to! I don’t want them to turn out like me! For me, this change was the worst in my life and if I try to help them like I want to, the only way I know how to, it might be even worse for them!”

Though most of the holograms glanced at each other in confusion, Scrapper looked contemplative. “Roady. What’s happened to you that we wouldn’t know about?”

Hauler swallowed with difficulty, grief and fear sweeping over him. These holograms he’d created were from the memories of his team _before_ the reprogramming and the reformation into a gestalt. It was starting to feel like he was asking too much of them and giving back too little, but he didn’t dare voice the long-ago betrayal. (In that way, he and Omega Supreme were alike.) These Constructicons may be simple programs, merely nostalgic images, but he wanted to protect them just as they were.

“Teletraan One, end access,” he sighed at last, shuttering his optics so he wouldn’t have to watch the team and the Crystal City dissolve into shadows. His spark sinking, Hauler went and unlocked the door, listening to the whir of the conversation being erased from the access banks. The next time he came, the pre-gestalt Constructicons wouldn’t remember a thing.

 _It’s_ so _easy to control this program_ , Hauler realized, not for the first time. And though he refused to let it form a solid thought in his CPU, it was among his abstract fears that if the new Minibot gestalt came to him for help, he might find it dangerously easy to control _them_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In this chapter, I gave the access codes special meanings:  
> "field force" is, of course "force field" backwards, Trailbreaker's special power;  
> "Mystique" is my headcanon name for Mirage's Carrier;  
> "Onyx Prime" was one of the 13 Primes, in tune with organics and nature, much like Hound, and April 4, 1927 is the birthday of Hound's voice actor, Ken Sansom: "4227";  
> "Autonomous Maxiumus" was one of the 13 Primes, lonely and rejecting his original name, much like Hauler, and in '84 Hauler was going to be the 12th of a box set of toys: "8412";
> 
> Also, "Conjunx Endura" is the official TF term for either the role of a "significant other" or the "marriage" itself.


	5. Chapter 5

Hauler wasn’t anywhere to be found—not in his quarters, the rec room, or training. After another dead end inquiring after the ex-Constructicon with Hound, Windcharger could tell Brawn wasn’t quite sure where to go from there.

“Guess we should head back to quarters?” Bumblebee suggested. Brawn nodded tersely and led the way. Windcharger felt a pang of guilt as he watched his pace-mates follow. The way they walked was different now; it may not look so different to the outside viewer, but he could discern it just as well, if not better, than they themselves could.

The quarters were dark when they entered and remained that way. As Windcharger watched everyone climb onto their separate berths, he decided it’d be more relaxing to remain in quiet shadows. If he was honest, he probably needed that relaxation more than the others did. He was having trouble sorting through the emotions racing through his chest. Which were his and which were theirs?

 _The anxiety is probably Huffer’s_.

 _Anger? Tone it down, CJ_.

 _You’re looking afraid right now, Bee_.

_Gears…this hopelessness is yours, isn’t it?_

_Wow, Brawn, way to keep it in check. I don’t feel anything from you!_

_Then where is this other feeling coming from? I don’t even know what it is…Excitement? Is that from_ me _?!_

As soon as that idea sank in, Windcharger did his best to press the emotion to the very back of his spark. Who knew what the others might do if they knew he was excited about this latest occurrence? At least they couldn’t hear his thoughts.

 _I’ve never felt so close to these guys before that combining thing happened! We were all united, completely seamless. I don’t think we could have_ planned _that better! Why can’t all of us see this as a good thing? It got the Decepticons to retreat, right?_ Windcharger couldn’t help but be thankful that the lights were off as he smiled a little. _Never heard Megatron scream like that before…But then again, haven’t heard it like that from my pace-mates either. That was a little disconcerting, and the spark merge was totally an accident! I didn’t mean to hurt them that way_.

Windcharger winced a little and rubbed his jaw where Cliffjumper had been punching him not too long before. Had the entire ordeal really been his fault alone? Magnetizing all of them, fastening them to him, had seemed like a good strategy at the time! It had taken Megatron down.

Then again, even he knew how impulsive he was. He had acted before he’d thought it all the way through. Still, it had been useful and he simply couldn’t have predicted that it might cause something like _this_.

Another surge of excitement threatened to spill over into his new six-way bond as he stared down at his hands. These weren’t just his own anymore. He had something more than just a pace. He wasn’t sure what being a gestalt entailed beyond basic knowledge that they were all inseparable.

If Windcharger were to be honest, that was what he had been longing for when he’d first joined the pace back on Cybertron.

His exhilaration immediately faltered when he thought of Cybertron, his life there before his rescue. Glaring lights, glaring optics filled with sadistic pleasure at his slavery, the destruction caused by his power that everyone else simply considered entertainment. The entrance of a criminal lord into his life and his following use as a weapon.

_“I can’t abuse innocent lives anymore. Please—”_

_“You seem to forget, little one, what you have learned throughout your pitiful, subjugated life. Do tell me again!”_

_“No one…is innocent.”_

_“And do you think they would hesitate to abuse you for your miraculous gift?”_

_“N-No…”_

_“Then you must strike first.”_

There was the day when he had leveled a building mid-construction. His ‘employer’ had insisted it would be both a nuisance and a danger to those of the lower castes. Thirteen levels of scaffolding and frame crumbled underneath the weight he placed simply by spreading his fingers. He had heard the screaming then, had realized his employer had lied to him when he’d said the area was clear. Between trying to reverse the polarity to re-secure the building and trying to give his feet super speed as he rushed toward the entrance, he had overloaded, dropping senselessly to the ground before he could do anything.

His excitement was gone, Windcharger realized as he returned to the dark berthroom on the _Ark_. It left him feeling cold, void, and small.

But those were the days of the past, he reminded himself fiercely. The pace had created the base for safety and control he’d needed; the gestalt was now creating unity and structure. Windcharger had always known that his gift was among the most powerful in his pace and the others had known it too, but he’d always secretly hoped for a chance to really show them how it could be used. When they had combined, the sense of all of their powers as one entity had been so satisfying after all those vorns of holding back.

_Each of us in our own unique places without having to be enslaved to them—beautiful!_

_And the closeness that the spark merge created was…precious. I can really feel and understand them when we’re combined!_

_How is this a curse? It’ll bring us closer together, make us the best, the most well-functioning pace, despite everything we’ve been through! Combining makes us stronger! I like being a gestalt, despite what the others think of it. With our strength, we might just win this war and bring peace, even if others are afraid of us, even if we’re afraid of each other! We can get used to it. We need to. I want to combine again!_

Almost before that thought fully computed, Windcharger released a yelp as he was suddenly dragged from his berth, somersaulting into the air mere kliks before the others were doing the same. The roof creaked, stretching upward with a metallic groan as the combiner’s helm and shoulders threatened its stability. Immediately he hunched over, gearing up to scream as the components’ fused sparks twisted in terror as their worst nightmare was coming true once more—

And that was when the light clicked on. Hauler stared up at the gestalt, leaning against the door as it shut behind him and looking ready to faint.


	6. Chapter 6

Hauler had seen the first transformation on the battlefield, though not up close. Here he could clearly recognize each component and their individual fear. He watched the huge vents contract and knew what was coming.

“Don’t scream!” he said quickly, stretching out a hand and struggling to push his own fear away. “It’s alright. I’m going to help you.”

“Get us out of this!” six voices chorused, shrill in panic.

“Alright. You need to calm down,” Hauler commanded, cringing a little when the roof creaked. “Careful and calm. There’s a reason you combined just now and as soon as you’re separate, I’ll tell you what it was. Each of you think of something that calms you—and _only_ you. There’s sure to be something. Your pace-mates may think it’s boring or annoying or even stupid, but for you it’s simply something private that you can enjoy quietly.” Lowering his voice a bit, Hauler continued, “Focus on it, on yourself. Who you are. It’s difficult, I know, because of the change, but think of who you’ve always known yourself to be. You are yourself. You’re unique, just _one_ of a kind.” He paused, demonstrating a calm demeanor, and then whispered, “Separate.”

To his great relief, the cranking of transformation cogs signaled their obedience. Most of them ended up in a heap on the floor, though Brawn tumbled onto his berth, where he immediately reacted by curling into himself. Hauler felt his spark waver at the pitiful sight and the way the rest of the Minibots scrambled to get away from each other.

After a series of tense kliks in which Hauler let them each retreat to their own resting places, he asked tentatively, “How do you feel?” So much hinged on their answer…

“Not exactly the way we’re supposed to,” Cliffjumper shot back. “Our sparks have bonded when they weren’t supposed to and we just had another episode of ‘pace togetherness’, but—oh, I’m being impolite. How are _you_?”

“Hey!” Huffer snapped. “Don’t talk to him like that. He’s the only one who can help us!” Sighing, the engineer hugged his knees against his chest, resting his chin on them.

“We need to know what it’s like to be in a gestalt,” Bumblebee stated unnecessarily. “You were in one once and we want to know how it’s done.”

Hauler stared at their eager faces and suddenly they seemed much younger than him, sparklings looking anxiously up at the Sire to solve the problem. He’d known they were going to ask this question—that was why he had come!—but he still didn’t have the miracle answer. What could he give them?

“I’ll…tell you the truth,” he stammered at last. “Being in a gestalt is taking an oath. You take on a lot of responsibility—to your friends and your family. You’re a _family_ now and you need to act like it. Like brothers.”

“How do gestalt-mates treat each other?” Gears pressed.

Hauler laughed humorlessly. “Well, I wasn’t in the _best_ of gestalts, but at the very base of the situation, there was a caste system.” He brushed away their horrified gasps and went on, “In essence you’ve already created it. The way you formed a combiner showed who _you_ subconsciously chose as each part. Brawn was— _is_ the helm. He’s the leader of your pace, isn’t he?” At their mutters of agreement, he continued, “Bumblebee was the core, the young spark among you. So on and so forth. You respect each part for being what they are.”

“But Scrapper isn’t Devastator’s helm,” Cliffjumper interrupted. “Isn’t he—I mean, _wasn’t_ he your leader?”

Hauler wondered for a nanoklik how he could choose to interpret Cliffjumper’s near slipup. Forcefully filing that question to the back of his attentions, he agreed coolly, “Yes, he’s the Constructicon leader, but he’s the right leg because he’s always the one to take the first step forward.”

“That makes sense,” Huffer agreed nervously, seeming to take note of how Hauler’s vocals had changed. Hauler internally scolded himself. They were in a sensitive place and would get easily rattled.

 _This is partly why it’d be so dangerous to control them_ , he reminded himself emphatically before moving to the right side of the room, where they could see him better. The easier it was to make optic contact, the easier it would probably be for trust.

“What else?” he prompted.

“The spark merge,” Gears muttered. “We feel each other’s emotions. Was that how it was for you?”

Hauler looked away for a klik. He had known this question was coming and yet it still caught him off guard somehow. “Yes, it was…and still is that way for me.” At their shocked expressions, he tried to shrug it off. “Well, it’s a spark bond, right? It never goes away. It’s faint when Devastator’s components are separate, which is most of the time, so usually it doesn’t bother me.”

“Why does it bother you at all?” Windcharger piped up. He glanced around at their incredulous looks and hunched a little, protesting, “What? Honest question. Why don’t you like it?”

“Because they’re Decepticons,” Hauler stated. “They don’t exactly take good care of each other emotionally. Ah, that’s another thing. Right now you’re feeling the bond strongly because you’re a new gestalt, but even when you start thinking of the link as natural, you have to remember this: none of you can play around with each other’s feelings because if you hurt one, you hurt all, including yourself.”

“You said there was a reason.” All optics raced to Brawn, who had just spoken for the first time, his voice brittle and solemn. “You said there was a reason we combined just then.”

 _Always like the leader to get to the spark of the problem_ , Hauler thought privately. Ex-venting carefully, he warned, “Brace yourselves. The reason you combined is the same reason _all_ gestalts combine: one of you wanted to.”

The only word Hauler could have used to describe their expressions was ‘thunderstruck’. At precisely the same nanoklik they all exploded into accusations, each giving reasons for or against each other—some reasons that were viable and others that were completely ridiculous. Hauler backed off as the suspects started to zero in, finally landing on the ultimate culprit.

Windcharger swallowed hard, scooting back on his berth until his chassis clanged against the wall. With a growl Cliffjumper leapt to the floor, but Hauler deftly maneuvered between them.

“I know this is hard. Already I’m reminding you: if you hurt him, you hurt yourself and everyone around you. His reasoning must have been sound, Cliffjumper.”

“Yeah? So why’s he look _that_ guilty?” Cliffjumper barked, doubling his fists and trying to stare Hauler down.

“That doesn’t matter. It could have been any one of you.”

Backing down a little, Cliffjumper scoffed. “I know _I’ll_ never want to combine again—”

“Stop right there,” Hauler commanded sharply. “You can’t predict what you’ll feel in the next few nanokliks, much less the span of that word ‘never’. The gestalt forms if any member—even you—feels the need to be defended or safe. This is _war_. Are you saying you’ll never be the least bit scared when a jet tries to run you down or ever get angry when a member of your pace limps out of the med bay?”

In the face of that logic, Cliffjumper cooled, mumbling something noncommittal in an undertone.

Hauler nodded approvingly, his own defensiveness draining. “Listen, all of you. If there’s _anything_ you all can agree on, it’s that you believe that you weren’t made to combine, to eventually become a gestalt.” Sighing, he questioned softly, “Have you considered that you’re assuming too much?”

Stunned, dread-filled silence was his answer.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hoo, sorry it took so long for me to get back to this! I had a serious case of writer's block when it came to Hauler and Ratch. :0 But it's back now!! 
> 
> Culumexians: the residents of Culumex, the Minibot city on Cybertron
> 
> Unraveler: a Culumexian who breaks up a pace; also a great dishonor to be named such and will result in permanent disownment

“You think this wasn’t an accident?” Gears spat. “That we were—what, _supposed_ to combine?”

“But Megatron and the rest of them looked just as surprised as any Bot!” Bumblebee protested.

“They could’ve been faking,” Huffer gasped. “This could be a plot to turn us all evil! Every time we combine, we could be drawing closer to the dark side!”

Gears watched Hauler with a mere sliver of amusement as the larger Bot tried to backpedal. “No, I don’t think this is any plot of theirs, but—”

“Who else is there?!” Brawn cut in.

“Anyone who hated us back on Cybertron?” Bumblebee suggested anxiously,

“Which was basically everyone, including the entire Minibot population,” Huffer pointed out miserably. “You know how we were seen: as destructive, homicidal, criminally-commanded, Unraveling exiles who’d belong better with Unicron than their fellow Culumexians!”

“Oh, thanks, Huffer! You’re so good at saying what we really need to hear,” Windcharger snapped, earning a nasty look from Cliffjumper.

“Says the one who _wanted_ us to combine!”

“Well, why is it such a bad thing?” Windcharger demanded, throwing up his hands. “The way I see it, our being a gestalt isn’t doing the Decepticons any good, which means it _is_ doing good for us!”

Cliffjumper was already clenching his fists, but Gears miraculously beat him to the _verbal_ punch. “What, losing our individuality is something a counselor would suggest?!” he near-screamed, certain he could feel steam hissing from his vents.

“Stop, stop!” Hauler cried, his tone warning that he was close to losing his patience, but now that Gears had started he couldn’t quite hit the brakes.

“You don’t know what it’s like, Windcharger, not being able to choose for yourself how you want to think or feel! What I think right now?!” Leaping to his feet, he shouted, “I think and feel that anything and anyone remotely involved with gestalts are—are Pit-spawn! This tricursed gestalt thing hurts too much; I don’t want help so I can accept it, I want help so I can be rid of it!”

Gears wasn’t quite sure what he had expected in response, but it wasn’t what he did receive: silence. He knew the others weren’t used to furious outbursts from him; they knew his grouchiness was most often the result of being a hypochondriac. When it wasn’t that, he was simply reminding them that someone else’s life could still be more miserable than theirs; it was a way of boosting their spirits. So why were they all staring at him with expressions of horror?

 _Even their faces seem similar now_ , Gears thought fleetingly before Hauler spoke in a cold voice.

“If you want to be rid of it so badly, I’ll give you your best option: there was a mech who helped this particular ‘Pit-spawn’ when I first got separated from the gestalt. Go talk to him!”

Gears realized his error then and opened his mouth, but Hauler was already striding out of the room.

“Great going, Gears,” Brawn muttered, but there was more worry in his voice than ire.

“Now what are we going to do?” Huffer fretted.

“Exactly what he said,” Bumblebee piped up. “We talk to the mech who helped him. We just…have to figure out who that is.”

A hailing beep interrupted their pondering silence and Gears mumbled shamefacedly, “Well, he forgives quickly.” When he opened the door, however, he didn’t find Hauler but Ratchet instead.

“I should have expected you to come here,” he mused. “Though I don’t know how you managed to get out of the _locked_ medical bay.”

“Ah…you may have to re-weld the hinges,” Bumblebee admitted, glancing at Brawn, who smiled for the first time in several minutes and punched one hand into the other.

“Primus preserve us,” Ratchet growled, directing an impressive glare at the pace-leader, who continued to grin unrepentantly back.

“What d’you need, doc?” Windcharger asked.

“I wanted to check on you,” Ratchet said simply, shrugging and fleetingly rubbing his chevron. “You weren’t doing well when I locked you in the med bay for that mass meeting. Has anything happened I should be aware of?”

Gears scoffed and gestured at Windcharger, who mastered the unrepentant expression just as beautifully as Brawn. “Genius here combined us again.”

Ratchet sputtered, echoing, “You combined again?!” Snapping his fingers, he pointed down the hall toward the med bay, commanding, “Come with me. I’m taking some readings from each of you!”

“Maybe you can help us,” Bumblebee replied as the pace filed out of the room after the medic. “We’re trying to figure out who could have helped Hauler adjust to being without his gestalt. It was back on Cybertron, we know that much—”

“That’s all we know,” Huffer lamented, causing Brawn to elbow him.

Bumblebee rolled his optics and glanced over his shoulder at the others, questioning, “So if it was on Cybertron, when Omega Supreme was young…who was even _there_ back then?”

Gears’ eyebrows shot up and he and Brawn shared an incredulous glance, following it with a jab at Bee’s side and a swat at the back of his helm.

“Hey! What?” Bumblebee whined, scurrying away from them.

“It wasn’t that long ago!” Brawn hissed at the same time Gears declared, “We’re not that old!”

Cliffjumper spoke up then, reminding them all of his presence. “I know who it could be.” At their questioning looks, he directed a pointed nod toward the taller Bot among them. Ratchet seemed to sense the exact nanoklik when they all focused on him.

“Let’s just say that back then, Cliffjumper nearly lost a distinguishing piece of his head. I kept that from happening, just like I was there for Hauler. He didn’t think he needed a medic, but I began to see telltale signs in him of a glitch known as G.S.T.S, Gestalt Separation Trigger Syndrome. In order to treat him permanently, I recruited an acquaintance of mine, Pacemaker, and we did some deep digging into the history and science of gestalts.” He paused, growling a curse when he saw the mangled med bay doors lying off to one side and stomped past them, gesturing for the Minibots to retake their medical berths while he retrieved his tools.

“So what did you find out?” Gears prompted impatiently. For that, Ratchet gave him a pointed look and started on him first with the scanner—not that Gears minded, certain that recombining had caused him some sort of harm on top of the rest of his issues.

“The information is scarce, but from what we could gather, scientists of old invented predispositioned gestalt coding for their own purposes. Cybertronians with the inert line of coding were drawn to each other—and kept together—until the time was right to combine.”

Ratchet refocused his attention on the scanners when an urgent beeping signaled that Gears’ spark pulse had skyrocketed. Gears swallowed his anxiety in favor of ire, but he couldn’t muster up much, asking in muted tones, “So…does that mean our pace is simply the product of some heirloom coding? We didn’t even have a choice?”

Brawn intercepted that line of thinking without delay. “No,” he answered firmly. “It means we were always meant to be together, to be a family.” Huffer, who sat next to him, opened his mouth but Brawn squeezed one of his elbows beforehand to silence him. “Sure, it isn’t random, but that means none of it is: my divorce with the first pace, my title as an Unraveler…They isolated me just enough that, to me, _you_ stood out from the crowd.”

The quiet that followed felt much more thoughtful. As powerful as the moment truly was, Gears wasn’t so wrapped up in it that he missed Ratchet’s nod of approval and Brawn’s returning shrug. Right now, he was choosing to be completely accepting of his role despite how it had changed in this past orn and a half.

Gears never would have expected the thought that rose in him at that sight: _Maybe we do have some hope after all_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “Scientists of old invented predispositioned gestalt coding for their own purposes.”
> 
> ...Curse you, Quintessons.


	8. Chapter 8

“Are we allowed to go now?” Huffer pleaded as Ratchet typed something up on his chart. “We need to find Hauler!”

“Find him?” Ratchet echoed. “I expected you to be welded to his side since he has so much to share on the subject of combiners.”

Huffer groaned, crossing his arms and shaking his helm. “If _someone_ hadn’t opened his big mouth and called Hauler a Pit-spawn, we would be!”

“ _What?!_ ” Ratchet cried, his optics enlarging.

Glancing heatedly at Gears, Huffer continued, “And he was the only one who could help us!” Gears leaned forward, starting to speak, but Huffer countered whatever he was going to say beforehand. “He’s one of the only larger frames I know who understands what it’s like to be rejected, looked down on, and he’s one of _my_ friends! Those don’t come easy to me and now he’s mad at _all_ of us!”

Gears ex-vented in annoyance, snapping at him in Culumexian, only to be countered by Bumblebee, who for once was glad to insert himself in the conflict. Windcharger said nothing, looking relieved that he wasn’t the one on the defensive anymore, but Cliffjumper rattled off a fine insult that got Windcharger going since it was directed at all in general. Brawn let loose before Windcharger had finished, warning everyone to back off or find themselves glad that they were already in the med bay.

That reluctantly ended the spat, leaving all but Huffer steaming and glowering at each other. Ratchet opened his mouth, either to pry into what had been said or to add a piece of his own mind, but he didn’t get the chance. Just then he got a communication over the comm. link.

“Emergency,” he informed them solemnly. “Prime’s asking for you.”

Glad for the diversion, Huffer leapt to his feet and raced out of the med bay ahead of the others, though they caught up to him in the main computer room.

“Decepticons, led by Starscream, are attacking a small oil plant northwest of here,” Optimus told them as soon as they arrived, weaving in between their comrades. “We’re going to rescue the humans.” It seemed straightforward enough, so Optimus strode between them, calling out, “Autobots—!”

“Uh, Prime, sir?” Bluestreak interrupted, causing all optics to zero in on him. Doorwings shivering, he blurted out, “Are you sure the Minibots should come along on this mission? I mean, everything is different now because they combine and we don’t know what exactly they’re capable of or _aren’t_ capable of now and it might be kinda dangerous to take out an untested prototype—not that I think they’re just a weapon, not at all—well, I mean—”

“He means,” Prowl smoothly cut off his twin’s rambling, looking apologetic, “—that we don’t think they’re ready.”

Huffer gaped at the Praxians and then at the others around them as they muttered quiet agreement. Optimus hesitated, glancing at the pace.

“Prime,” Brawn began through clenched teeth, “are we really going to be sidelined because of _opinions_? Whatever we are, we’re Autobots and we can help.”

“Agreed,” Optimus said at last, casting a meaningful glance at his second-in-command, who lowered his doorwings in acquiescence. “Let’s roll out!”

As he drove with the rest of the team through the desert, Huffer wasn’t sure he was thankful to Brawn for what he had said. Bluestreak and Prowl were right to be worried; they still had no idea what they were capable of and still had so much to learn.

 _Will we get to learn all we need to without Hauler?_ Huffer agonized, immediately arguing with himself, _No, he’s sure to forgive us_. With that he pushed the worries out of his mind, producing his blaster and joining the others in the fight.

It turned out _both_ jet trines had gotten interested in the oil plant, Huffer noticed, ducking as Thrust made a pass at him. And of course the flesh creatures were getting in the way, making it much more difficult to fire at will. Despite that, Huffer had to admit that he wasn’t as scared as he could be in this battle; he and the rest of the pace were keeping their roiling emotions well in check, as Hauler’s advice had stuck with them:

_“The gestalt forms if any member—even you—feels the need to be defended or safe.”_

_We just have to keep calm then_ , Huffer decided, scurrying behind an outcrop of boulders and venting deeply, tamping down his usual foreboding with adrenaline. There was no need to be afraid. The Decepticons were under Starscream’s leadership since the combiner had stepped on Megatron.

“And we all know how Starscream leads,” Huffer whispered, laughing tremulously before lunging into the field once more to throw a potshot at Dirge. This prompted the blue jet to transform after his trine-mates, streaking into the sky and then circling back around.

Momentarily ignored by the Cons, Huffer shaded his optics, following the Coneheads’ descent toward a short, rocky ridge where Cliffjumper was fighting. The secondary trine landed surrounding Cliff, pinning him against the ridge, which rose to his lower back.

Even with those odds, Cliffjumper grinned widely, sending a pulse of glee through the six-way bond. Huffer watched him curse the Coneheads and then prime his glass gas. There was no way he couldn’t handle them.

It was then that Huffer heard the roar of engines from the other trine, dodging the panicked humans darting back and forth and the defensive attacks of the larger Bots. They took to the air and Huffer was certain he saw the exact moment when they noticed the Coneheads’ position.

As soon as the Coneheads’ plan computed with him, Starscream made a U-turn, turning his engines to overdrive. Skywarp and Thundercracker followed his example, flanking him as he flew downward. Starscream twirled several times, shrieking at them manically, “No, no! This one’s mine!”

His shrill command caught Cliffjumper’s attention; Huffer saw him jerk his helm up to discover the Seekers, shadowed by the sun as they raced down at him. Starscream was mid-transformation, pulling his blaster and laughing feverishly, ready to blast Cliffjumper to his death. Thundercracker was shouting at Starscream, calling him a fool for stealing their element of surprise, but Huffer barely listened. Cliffjumper wrenched his gaze away from Starscream, staring through the barrier the Coneheads were forming, and Huffer locked optics with him. Even without their bond, Huffer could have blatantly seen what Cliff felt right now. It looked so wrong on him, on the one who was always ready to keep fighting, even to the death, but undeniably it was there…

Fear.

“Minibots!” Huffer hollered. “Transform! Merge into Indomitus!”

Cliffjumper tore through those pinning him down, transforming into the right arm and sending a vibration of thanks through the bond. The others hadn’t seen what Huffer had, so he could feel their confusion and demands for an explanation, but he didn’t reply, throwing himself forward so the other leg, Gears, was forced to walk as well. The combiner approached, the Cliffjumper arm reaching for the cowering Coneheads, and Starscream was flipping back to jet mode before he hit the ground, arcing upward toward Skywarp and Thundercracker.

“Decepticons, retreat!” he howled, his tone unbefitting his frame’s grace, and the combiner couldn’t help laughing as the others rushed to obey.

 _That’s likely the only command Starscream could give that they would_ eagerly _follow_ , Huffer mused proudly as he separated from the others with a bit less of a struggle than before.

The other Autobots surrounded them, optics wide and questions coming from all sides, but Cliffjumper apparently didn’t care. Sitting up from where he had landed, he sputtered in disbelief, “ _Indomitus?!_ ”

Huffer shrugged with a tiny smile, drawing his knees up to his chest and focusing on catching ahold of his vents.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, I have finally named the Minibot combiner. ;) NOT to be confused with Jurassic World! I came up with this on my own.


	9. Chapter 9

Prowl let out a mangled Praxian curse of surprise, his doorwings flattening onto his back as he narrowly sidestepped Windcharger’s body flying past him, limbs flailing before being compressed and…reshaped.

“Prowl,” Bluestreak gasped, picking the SIC up and gesturing wildly at the combiner as it scared the Decepticons off. “That—that—”

“That is exactly what I was afraid of,” Prowl said grimly, shrugging out of Bluestreak’s grip and striding toward the circle of Bots surrounding the Minis as soon as they separated. Shouldering through, Prowl asked as calmly as he could, “What was your reason for combining? The threat wasn’t perilous!”

Either they didn’t hear him beneath the other mechs’ questions or they chose to ignore him. He would get his answer later, Prowl decided, stepping back to a place where Bluestreak could bounce nervously by his left elbow.

“Are you angry, Prowl, because they combined? Are they going to get in trouble?”

“No, Bluestreak, I’m not angry,” Prowl replied, holding up a placating hand. “As to if they’re going to get in trouble, I’m not certain yet.” Venting evenly, he glanced at Optimus, hoping to gauge his reaction to the combiner’s reappearance, who was too preoccupied studying the Minibots as they dusted themselves off to notice.

Once they had returned to the _Ark_ , Prowl wove through the Bots chattering about what had happened on the battlefield, narrating it to those who had remained behind. Making his way down one of the many halls, he paused before Prime’s office, wondering if he should let some time pass before he went in and said what he needed to.

Deciding against that, he knocked and on Optimus’ invitation entered. “Prime, sir,” Prowl greeted solemnly. “We need to talk.”

Optimus set aside the energon cube he’d been preparing to open, folding his hands and tilting his helm. “Oh? About what?”

“I have a feeling you know,” Prowl sighed as he sat in the chair before Optimus’ desk, forcing Optimus to drop the façade.

“What are they calling the combiner now? Indomitus?”

“I was too far away to hear it on the battlefield, but that’s what the others on the mission team are saying,” Prowl confirmed, pausing another klik or two before leaning forward earnestly. “Sir, I know the Minibots are more in control of this situation than we are, but we are their commanding officers! Surely we need to set some boundaries!”

Usually Prowl was good at reading Optimus’ face, even behind his mask. Right now his expression was unreadable. “Such as?”

He was being heard, Prowl realized with relief. “I suggest we take them off active duty indefinitely— _not_ permanently, but indefinitely—so that they can endure some tactical training scenarios. As…impressive…as their display today was, I _highly_ doubt they’re in full control of Indomitus. They need guidance as to when it’s alright to combine and when it isn’t.”

“And it wasn’t today?” Optimus questioned lightly.

“Not in my opinion,” Prowl admitted, measuring Optimus’ odd vocal tone in the back of his mind. “Minibots flying through the air at random can put other teammates in harm’s way unnecessarily! I was nearly laid out by Windcharger zipping past me today. What would have happened if one of the Cons had taken advantage of that and had sniped me while I was down?! I likely wouldn’t be sitting here speaking with you.”

Optimus hummed contemplatively and Prowl settled back in his chair, calming his voice so it sounded less pleading. Optimus just needed a small push in order to see his side, see that he was only trying to be the voice of the other Bots.

“You know I dislike the unprecedented, Prime. It’s how I was made and it’s my respectful opinion that at this time, Indomitus is too unpredictable. From what I’ve seen so far, it doesn’t have a regard for the safety of the other Bots. Yet. I’m certain that Red Alert would be willing to help me come up with a suitable program for training them. Do I have your authorization?”

Optimus sighed deeply, lowering his gaze to the desk in front of him and shaking his helm. “I’m sorry, Prowl. No.”

His solid case for the other Bots was crumbling, Prowl realized, sitting up straighter and trying to speak evenly. “Is it my place to ask why not?”

“Even if it wasn’t, I would tell you,” Optimus answered, following Prowl’s example and straightening his backstrut so he was just tall enough in his chair to intimidate. “We weren’t winning today, Prowl.” At Prowl’s questioning eyebrow, he added, “We weren’t losing…but we weren’t winning either.”

Prowl watched in confusion as Optimus rubbed his chamfron, his EM field radiating fatigue, before continuing, “If the Minibots hadn’t combined, perhaps we could have won. We might have come back with little harm, just a few dents for Ratchet to patch up. But that’s all we’ve been causing the Decepticons—mere dents.”

“But Prime, dents can always be deepened! If we—” Prowl tried, only to submit to his leader holding up a hand.

“It’s not enough. There have been too many stalemates, Prowl! Unless something _drastically_ changes, nothing will. I believe Indomitus could be the right change.” Looking up, Prime added pointedly, “As do some of the other mechs in the ship.”

“What?” Prowl gasped.

“I’ve spoken with some of the other officers and most of them agree that having a combiner on the roll call could be what wins the war. In fact, Prowl, so far you and Bluestreak are the only mechs I’ve seen to blatantly oppose the idea.”

Prowl faltered for a nanoklik. “We’re…just concerned,” he stammered at last. “And Bluestreak is mostly following my example. The combiner…it’s made up of loose cannons—”

Optimus’ vocals sharpened without warning. “The combiner is not an _‘it’_ , Prowl! _He_ is made up of loyal Autobots who are willing to put aside their own fear of change to help our cause.” Optimus let that sink in before continuing, “The residents of Culumex have _always_ believed they were set apart from larger frames. In many ways they are: they’re smaller, far stronger, and have practices completely foreign to us. I studied thousands of files in many languages as an archivist and I never mastered a _single word_ of their dialect. I never understood why their frames have a limit to how much high-grade they can hold. I don’t know what the true significance of a pace is and we all learned the hard way not to speak of Unraveling.

“But this newest development shouldn’t be an excuse to isolate them further. It’s bringing them closer together and they’re choosing to use that ability to benefit _us_! I refuse to even _think_ of rejecting the offer simply because Indomitus is unique—as you say, unprecedented. The Minibots aren’t going to be sidelined; I won’t push them away because they _are_ part of this family, even if they don’t know or feel it.”

He’d made a terrible mistake and had overstepped his bounds, Prowl saw, swallowing uneasily and wondering what he could say to apologize. Before he began putting words together, a hailing beep caught their attention. Optimus’ dark expression eased and he called out, “Enter.”

Green and purple plating glimmered out of the shadows from the hallway. “Sorry to interrupt, sirs,” Hauler offered quietly. “But it’s important.”

Prowl stood, trying to maintain his dignity as he turned his back to Optimus and his gaze to the mech at the door. “How can we help?” he asked stiffly.

“Actually, I want to help you,” Hauler replied, shuffling in with his hands woven tightly together in front of him. “I heard what happened at the oil plant today and…I wanted to warn you.”

Taking in the worry surrounding Hauler, Optimus prompted, “Warn us of what?”

Venting deeply, Hauler forced out, “Megatron will be angry that they’ve suffered another defeat because of Indomitus. We haven’t received intel, but I know he’ll attack soon. And when he does…he’s going to bring Devastator.”


	10. Chapter 10

As much as he hated to admit it, Hauler came out of Prime’s office shaky. He had just endured a rigorous interrogation in response to the brief warning he had given them of Devastator’s likeliness to appear in the next battle. _I should have expected that_ , he realized now, massaging his chamfron and venting deeply to calm his squirming spark. Prowl had immediately taken a data pad from Optimus, primed a new file, and then their questions had come in hard and fast:

“What are the weaknesses of an experienced combiner? Specifically Devastator?”

“Which member in your opinion is the weak link?”

“And what flaws might he try to exploit in a new combiner?”

“What has the potential to go wrong for Indomitus due to his lack of training?”

“Where will Megatron have Devastator positioned? Will he wait to dispatch him until Indomitus appears or do you think he’ll attempt to dispose of each member while they’re separate?”

“Do you believe Indomitus could be given enough training to match Devastator in the next battle, whenever it may be?”

He had answered each question as briefly as he could while still be thorough, privately hoping that the next one would be the last. Finally Optimus seemed to realize how overwhelmed he was feeling and had dismissed him, telling him he needed to discuss this topic with the rest of the officers.

Presently, Hauler didn’t want to think of any gestalts any more. He wanted to push them out of his mind and not be probed about them. That of course meant going back to the unnoticed room where he had helped Hound, Mirage, and Trailbreaker install the holo-emitters.

“Teletraan,” he sighed, “activate Field Force Mystique. Access Code: Onyx Prime 4227.” It seemed to take longer this time, but that could just be his impatience to see his old team again. He had a feeling that they would be the only ones on the ship who wouldn’t want to ask him how he was coping or what might happen to the Minibots now.

Hauler shuttered his optics as the holograms assembled; for now he wanted to pretend they were real, that they were truly here and ready to help him.

“Road Hauler. What have you been building?”

He opened his optics, barely smiling at Hook, who had asked the familiar Constructicon greeting. “Well, as of late nothing. Not that I’ve been lacking inspiration.”

“Alright. What’s the problem?” Scavenger demanded, folding his arms in a bit of a pout.

Waving the question away, Hauler questioned, “What have _you_ all been building?” It would be interesting to see how the holograms answered…

“Roady, you’ll be glad to hear that I’ve recently been encrypting the main data hub in our quarters,” Scrapper replied, visor flashing in irritation. “No hackers will be getting through again, I’m sure! And if they do, I’ll be able to track the starting point of the breach.”

“That’s where I come in,” Bonecrusher announced, chuckling menacingly and grinding his joints. “To find that bootlegger, break, enter, and _break_ some more!”

Hauler winced before quickly reminding himself that Bonecrusher had made boasts like that even before the reprogramming. What he found more attention-grabbing, however, was that the program had done as he had hoped and expected: it had extrapolated on the memory of a hacker breaking into their network and meticulously going over every one of their building plans.

“You _are_ glad to hear that, aren’t you?” Scrapper added pointedly, leaning forward and recapturing his attention.

Hauler glanced up at him, nodding vigorously. “Of course! At least now we have a _chance_ of capturing…whoever it was.” He smiled widely, not allowing them to see behind it, where he was recalling a much more recent time—when he had discovered the _Ark_ ’s security director was quite the masterful researcher.

“What else?” he prompted.

“I’ve been doing something much more impressive than coding,” Hook told him confidently. “I’m building an assembly hall.”

Bonecrusher scoffed. “More like failing to build one. I’ll tell you what he’s doing: he’s trying to develop a building in the shape of a rhombus.”

Hauler blinked, reminding them cautiously, “We’ve done that before…”

Bonecrusher tilted his helm in a familiar way—he was rolling his optics behind his visor. “A _four_ -dimensional rhombus.”

Hauler’s mouth opened slightly as he tried to process that. Muttering thoughtfully, he started to pace, half-mindedly miming a rhombus with his hands before he glanced at Hook for confirmation.

“And there’s going to be a second wing in the shape of a scalenohedron,” their medic added indignantly.

“Oh, I…I’m sure you’ll manage it,” Hauler assured him, holding up a hand before he could get too upset. “You’re an artist.”

Nodding, Hook turned to the others, folding his arms imperiously. “See? An _artist_ , he calls me.”

Scavenger cupped his hands around his mouth, hissing theatrically, “Thanks, Roady! Now we’ll never hear the end of it!”

Hauler grinned, whispering back, “You’re welcome!” He laughed and after another few kliks his smile softened slightly. “Do you remember when we built the vlin?”

“That was a long time ago,” Bonecrusher remarked, nodding thoughtfully. “I believe it was made of a steel and aluminum compound?”

Hauler was pleased. “That’s right.”

“With annealed iron strings,” Mixmaster agreed, jutting out his chin self-assuredly. “I made ’em myself by stringing them in a vat of—”

“ _Don’t_ start listing all the acids, I beg of you,” Hook groaned, pressing a hand over his visor and holding the other in front of Mixmaster’s face.

Scrapper gave them a warning look and then concluded, “And then Scav’ tried for joors on end to play it with a pair of electromagnets. Of course it sounded horrible because only magnetically attuned players can manage not to make fools of themselves. Key word: _attuned!_ ”

Hauler hummed his agreement, starting eagerly, “I know someone who’s attuned and he used to play the vlin. I wonder if he still—” He paused, his smile fading.

The mechs before him…not long ago, in Prime’s office, he had been planning their defeat.

 _No, no,_ they _aren’t_ these _mechs_ , he reminded himself firmly. _These are my family members, my friends_. Sadness stirred, trying to take away his good mood, which was already retreating for his anxiety. It was pitiful that he was calling mere shadows his friends. They were just a comfort to him in the absence of his _real_ friends.

His real friends were the Minibots. Hauler vented deeply, trying to push the disconcerting realization away but failing. The situation was all too real to him: his friends were going to be attacked by what used to be his family, who he had disowned and vice versa. Even with the way Gears had driven him away by demeaning him, he still couldn’t resist longing to help them.

Gears had simply spoken out of fear, the same fear Hauler felt now. Because they both knew exactly what was going to happen if they didn’t get the help they needed; they knew exactly who was going to win that upcoming fight. No insult was worth leaving his friends to be helplessly _maimed_.

“Teletraan One, end access,” Hauler said quickly, turning for the door before the rest of his team had even finished dissolving. Still, he couldn’t help but be grateful to his comforters for showing him the truth. Devastation had a way of doing that.


	11. Chapter 11

Brawn didn’t accept the hand Bumblebee put out to help him up from the training room floor, clenching his fists and pushing himself up on his own. He swept his gaze over each of his pace-mates, trying to cope with the sudden emptiness that gestalt separation left in his mind.

In some ways it felt nice to clear his processor of their jumbled thoughts and in others it felt as though some of _his_ thoughts had been taken from him. Still, he had to push that aside. They were all watching him expectantly and he needed to answer them.

“It seemed pretty good,” he managed at last. “But I noticed you overcompensating, Gears. You weren’t letting Huffer pull his own weight; we were _limping_ through that last run.” Jazz, who was overseeing their training, nodded his agreement.

“Sounds about right, my mech. But, hey, we have time to work on that. You can hit the wash-racks if you like.”

The rest of the pace shuffled in that direction, with Bumblebee pausing at the door of the training room. “Um…you coming, Brawn?” he questioned.

“Go ahead, little buddy,” Brawn waved him away. “I’m grabbin’ a cube.”

With that he strode in the opposite direction of the others, bravely resisting the urge to wrap his arms around himself and sink onto the floor. Did they really know how disconcerting his role was, as the head of Indomitus? ‘Inert gestalt coding’ or not, Brawn doubted that he was made to bear that many points of view. He was a basher, not a mastermind. These were the thoughts racing through his internals as he took his cube to the Minibots’ corner table.

 _We’re not ready_. That was an especially dangerous idea to be harboring, Brawn realized, but it wasn’t as if he could help it. Even if they pushed their training until all of them were in the med bay—which in and of itself would take something akin to a meteor strike or Cosmic Rust—Brawn just…knew. They would need years to even reach Devastator’s current strength and skill, much less legitimately _beat_ —

Brawn looked up from his untouched cube as an alarm abruptly went off. His spark sinking, he pushed the fuel aside and leapt down from the bench, racing to the control room and beating his pace there by a minute or two.

“Megatron just contacted me,” Optimus announced with an edge to his vocals. “It’s just as Hauler predicted. Megatron told me that I’m allowed to bring one trusted officer—” Here he directed a pointed look at Jazz, who straightened with an uncharacteristically serious face. “—and my combiner,” he finished. “He’s bringing the same: Soundwave and Devastator.”

Venting deeply, Brawn glanced at the others. He’d gotten better at reading their faces, he discovered, noticing the drawn plating that shouldn’t fit with their soft optics. They looked worn but…trusting. They trusted _him_.

“Alright,” he said with about half of his usual bravado. “You all feel tough enough for another round?” None of them were about to say no.

The battleground was made of open desert—open enough for a combiner to fall, Brawn realized with unease. He promptly suppressed that as he spotted Megatron, standing with folded arms and an open smirk on his face. Soundwave looked stony, radiating cold calculation as he gave the Minibots a onceover. The Constructicons had already combined, casting a long, long shadow over their competition.

“Slaggin’ Cons,” Cliffjumper spat, glaring unfazed at the other gestalt. “They think they can intimidate us? They’ve got another thing coming.”

“Why waste time then?” Brawn muttered—as Cliffjumper said, he was more angered than intimidated by the sight of Devastator. “Culumexians! Merge into Indomitus!” The sensation of flying through the air was slowly, slowly growing more familiar, but Brawn still braced himself for what came next. Almost immediately:

_Keep outta my space, Windcharger!_

_You’re on the completely opposite side of Bumblebee, CJ; how am I in your space?_

_Being the torso between you two bickering can be really inconvenient, you know that?_

_Bug out, Bumblebee._

_Oh, you did not just make a bug pun, did you?_

_Focus!_ Brawn shot the mental order to the three before Devastator lunged, swinging a massive arm at—none of them. Instead he went for the left leg, trying to crash it against the right. Huffer promptly swept himself backward, out of range, and Gears fumbled a little trying to move beside him instead of into him.

 _Easy does it, Huffer_ , Brawn soothed as Bumblebee, the conduit for the combiner’s spark, advised him of the twinge of alarm from their purple and orange limb. Huffer sent a throb of apology to Gears’ strand of the bond, which responded with a fairly calm acceptance. Though it seemed a long process to Brawn, this conversation happened in the span of a few kliks and then Devastator was swinging again.

As encouraging as Brawn was to his mates in their moves, he wasn’t quite sure how to respond when Devastator went for Indomitus’ _head_. He wasn’t himself, he wasn’t able to lift arms to block—but this series of worries earned a clean block from Windcharger and a vibration of triumph. Rarely in Brawn’s life had he ever felt helpless, but that had been one of his greatest worries in the training simulations: that one of the others wouldn’t respond in time and he, possessing no limbs but _them_ , would be unable to stop them getting hurt.

 _Don’t focus on that_ , he told himself savagely. _This is real, this is_ real, _don’t distract the others!_

 _Stop thinking aloud, Brawn, and send some sense in Huffer’s direction!_ Gears snapped, folding into himself to avoid the erratic opposite leg.

What was happening to Huffer? Brawn sent a questioning ping to Bee, who swiftly probed at Huffer’s string of their bond. Bypassing Bumblebee’s prompt for explanation, Huffer sent his feelings straight to the top. Brawn grimaced as he felt the frenzied stream of questions from his borderline-hysterical One.

_Brawn, Brawn! Mixmaster is targeting me and I don’t know why! Why aren’t they going for Gears? He’s just as much a leg as I am, but they’re ignoring him! I don’t know how much longer I can keep my balance! Is there anything you can do? He keeps trying to kick me and trip me up; why aren’t they paying any attention to all of—_

_Let me give it a go if you can’t handle it!_ Cliffjumper cut him off, coiling at the elbow and lashing out for Devastator’s visor, clawing at it.

“Petty building blocks!” Devastator snarled, his Bonecrusher arm latching onto Cliffjumper and wrenching him into a hammerlock. None of the others had to search for Cliffjumper’s pain at that movement, but it didn’t last long. As Windcharger started to guide their frame into turning, Mixmaster’s shrill laughter emerged in Devastator’s vocals and their enemy’s leg again lashed out, colliding with a thunderous crash into Huffer.

Brawn only felt Huffer’s agony for a nanoklik before the force of the blow tore him off of Indomitus’ frame, splintering the bond and sending his now-much-smaller frame flying. Everyone’s thoughts blurred into an incoherent mass of loss and terror, but Brawn could still make out Gears twisting himself every direction as he failed to support them. The weight of the unnatural separation crashed their drives and they crumpled, each component somersaulting into the sand.

Gasping, fighting the unfamiliar urge to black out, Brawn propped himself up on hands and knees as quickly as he could, counting each of his pace-mates as he found them. He had to remember how to work this smaller frame; he had to reach someone, to help!

“Huffer!” he called hoarsely, clambering toward his friend, who had his arms clamped around himself and was lying very still. The only movement was that of his optics, rounding out and spilling coolant.

They had targeted him because they knew how he doubted himself as an individual, Brawn realized as he reached his One, seizing his shoulders and bodily folding him into a sitting position, propping him against a collection of bushes before whirling around and charging right for Devastator. Gears caught onto his plan, scrambling upright and springing onto the Scrapper-leg, slamming every angle he could reach with his small but powerful fists.

“Do _not_ underestimate a Minibot’s strength,” Brawn snarled as he dug into and scaled grooves of Devastator’s armor, on course toward his face and almost unfazed when he was pried off and thrown back at the ground, forced to start over. “Don’t underestimate even _one_ of us!”

Bumblebee had pulled his blaster and, backed up by Optimus and Jazz, opened fire on Devastator’s torso. Cliffjumper was cursing and spitting, sending a torrent of glass gas at his counterpart arm while Windcharger engaged his own, magnetism rippling, crushing into the plating of it. Devastator howled wordlessly, flinging the pace in every direction like so many Scraplets, bloodying them, denting them, only for them to rush right back at him.

“Decepticons!” Megatron bellowed, catching the Autobots’ attentions. “Attack!”

Brawn glanced over his shoulder from where he clung to Devastator’s chest, watching Prime’s optics enlarge and then following his gaze. Starscream was leading an ambush party right toward them! Typical of Megatron to play dirty—if only he realized what a dangerous game he was playing.

“Autobots! Fall back!” Optimus hollered. Brawn growled wordlessly, reeling a fist back and throwing a final blow to the armor over Devastator’s spark, leaving a steady leak of energon where his blow struck.

 _Next time I’ll leave them with more than that!_ he swore as he dropped heavily back to the ground, gathered up Huffer’s frame in his arms and retreated with the others.


	12. Chapter 12

“Can he transform?” Ratchet demanded a mere two kliks after Brawn appeared, supporting Huffer, with the others trailing after him.

Brawn answered with a silent shake of the helm and handed his pace-mate over to the medic, who guided Huffer by the arm toward the medical berth closest and ordered, “If you can, hop up there and lie as still as you can while I get my tools. What happened?” He had a good idea just by the severity of the injury, as well as the ones he was seeing on Brawn and the others as he surreptitiously studied them in his peripheral vision.

However, it would have been helpful if any of them had answered his question. Instead they all wordlessly made their way to their own medical berths, either looking at the walls or the floor—not at Ratchet, which left him free to stare at them and take note of the fact that they weren’t looking at each other either.

It was rare to see Culumexians in his medical bay with injuries like these, he thought with a deep frown as he strode briskly back, handing out synthetically-woven bandaging for the Minibots to press over their accessible wounds. Afterward he approached Huffer and scanned the massive dents on his lower abdomen and waist. As concerning as those were, Ratchet was more focused on another rarity which they were displaying.

“So if this is what Devastator did to you,” he commented breezily, “I trust you left him in worse shape?”

They were quiet—uncharacteristically so—and it was beginning to worry him. Impulsively he relocated the scanner, settling it over Huffer’s chest and studying his spark pulse intently. It was elevated but weaker than usual; he looked to be in some shock.

“It would really help if I didn’t have to waste time deciphering what happened to him,” Ratchet remarked with an emerging edge in his vocals, looking pointedly up at the others. Still none of them would meet his optics and he could feel his own spark pulse climbing. What was wrong with them? Was the damage more severe than his scans were reaching?

If that was the case, they needed to _tell_ him! Not that any patient in this particular group would be decent enough to do so without the encouragement of a wrench, Ratchet reminded himself, clenching his scanner more tightly.

Engine revving mutedly in frustration, he set the tool aside before he broke it, stating with flat professionalism, “Huffer, I’ll need to remove all this damaged plating. The dents can be hammered out of your chassis plating. As for the waist plating, it’s too damaged for salvaging; it’ll need to be replaced. Fortunately I decided to keep the extra Culumexian metal I have in storage—not that you usually need that, given your strength. In this case, though, I’d say you’re fortunate that your hipstruts don’t need re-welding.”

Before he could consider what else he might say, he heard scrambling feet at the door. They sounded overly loud, but Ratchet took it as a relief. Glancing over his shoulder, he greeted, “Hauler. It’s good to see you here, though I expected you to have arrived a few minutes ago.”

“Hi, Ratchet,” Hauler answered hurriedly before turning his attention to the Minis. “What hap—”

“Don’t bother,” Ratchet interrupted. “Apparently Ravage caught their tongues during the battle.” At Hauler’s confused glance, Ratchet went on to explain as though the Minibots simply weren’t in the room. If they wanted to act invisible, he was alright to treat them as such. “From what I can tell, Devastator beat the scrap out of them. Who knows how, but it’s put them in a sort of…waking stasis, strong enough that I can’t even tell them my news!”

“Can you bring them around?” Hauler asked anxiously. “Wait—what news?”

“Before they came in, I was working on recovering all the data I collected on gestalts. I succeeded; in fact, I retrieved all that data and then some. I now have a way of _removing_ the gestalt coding from their systems.” These last words he more strongly enunciated and was pleased to see small shifts that indicated the Minibots had heard and understood.

Hauler sputtered slightly, optics huge. “You…do?”

“That’s what I said,” Ratchet said flatly before reminding himself to be a bit more patient. It wasn’t Hauler with whom he was frustrated. “It’s much like how I treated you of your G.S.T.S.”

Hauler’s optics flickered to the floor for a few kliks and Ratchet knew he was remembering the day he’d been brought to a Cybertronian emergency room. The medic probably remembered it more clearly than he did, since Hauler had already been halfway into stasis by the time he’d reached the place. Ratchet and a younger medic from another Autobot base, Pacemaker, had been called in to assist in a mandatory surgery for Inferno, who had gotten into a grave accident on his latest rescue.

Not long after the surgery, when the weary pair was both refueling for the first time in fifteen joors, Diode, the medic who ran the facility, burst in.

“Ratch, P.M.,” he pleaded, “I need your expertise on this!”

The urgency in Diode’s vocals forced Ratchet and Pacemaker to set aside their momentary annoyance at the audacious nicknames. “Don’t tell me Inferno’s vent collapsed again!” Ratchet gasped, leaping to his feet.

“No, it’s another patient who just arrived,” Diode explained, gesturing speedily for them to follow. The trio zigzagged their way through the busy halls of the hospital to the waiting room, which they reached only in time to escort the unfamiliar mech back the way they had come.

“Slag,” Ratchet had cursed in disbelief as the bot was wheeled past him.

“Yeah, he’s _going_ to be slag if I don’t operate,” Diode agreed worriedly. “But I’ve never seen this type of damage! What could have caused this? A guardian?”

“I doubt it,” Pacemaker brushed the idea away just as quickly as Diode had supplied it. “Guardians don’t attack haphazardly and even when they do, they’re selective about the injuries they give! They don’t want to kill people, just drive them off. But from what I’m seeing…” On impulse he strengthened his stride and swiped at one of the many leaks from the mech’s plating. “Ratchet?” he prompted, holding out his fingertips for Ratchet to scan.

“Energon, oil, lubricant,” he listed uneasily. “You don’t usually see all three. If it wasn’t a Guardian, it was at least something as powerful or as big as one.”

Another grueling surgery and nearly two quintuns of recovery later, Ratchet and Pacemaker had asked him what could have done such incredible damage to his systems. They hoped that the time ‘Road Hauler’ had been given to process would make him more forthcoming about the answer.

“My family,” Road Hauler had told them shortly. Ratchet had been prepared to admonish him for not reporting domestic abuse, but Road Hauler stopped him by going on: “I never saw it coming. They were…changed. We all could tell that somehow I was supposed to be changed too but I wasn’t.” His vocals starting shaking but they were still strong enough to be heard over the quickening beat of the spark monitor. “They beat me enough to subdue me and got as far as linking me into their new g-gestalt bond before my coding interfered. Even—even with the bond, I wasn’t c-compatible. So they beat me some more and then…just…left me there.” Burying his face in his hands, he whimpered, “I wish I had just _died_.”

The two medics had known better than to leave on that borderline-suicidal note. While Ratchet kept him company and explained what the other Constructicons had done by bonding his spark to theirs, Pacemaker cashed in many favors he was owed and played the many strings he could choose from—including going to Optimus Prime and asking if the castaway could join their ranks.

Not long after the mostly-healed Road Hauler was sworn in to the cause as Hauler, his Gestalt Separation Trigger Syndrome had, as the humans put it, ‘reared its ugly head’. Brought on by the long-term—and permanent—neglect of combining, the coding that had been forced into him was corrupting his _natural_ codes.

“You remember how the code corruption caused your special abilities to malfunction? Hand removal, crane workability, and radiography imaging?” Ratchet of the present prompted.

Hauler grimaced, absently rubbing his hands together at the memory. “Do I ever!”

“Well then, you’ll also remember how I found the correct line of coding to remove the glitch from your systems, as well as the corrupted coding.” Ratchet couldn’t help the surge of pride in his spark as his processor called up the old image of Hauler eagerly testing his freed systems.

“Though it cost me the radiography imaging,” Hauler sighed. “It was too corrupted to save.”

“But it was worth it, otherwise you probably wouldn’t be standing here,” Ratchet declared. “Anyway, like that, I found what looks to be the proper line of coding to remove from their systems. Once I operate on it, they’ll no longer combine into a gestalt. They’ll still have the gestalt _bond_ —as we all know bonds never fully fade away—but they would no longer be considered a combiner.”

Hauler considered this and Ratchet was pleased to see the beginnings of a smile—until those beginnings froze. “Wait. Did you just say they’d still have the bond?”

Why did he look so alarmed? Ratchet nodded, perplexed, and Hauler pressed his hands to the sides of his helm in horror. “Ratchet! If they had the bond but weren’t able to combine, _they_ would get G.S.T.S! Wouldn’t they?!”

In Ratchet’s peripheral vision, he saw both Brawn and Huffer sit up. “But I can remove it just as I did for you,” he protested.

“What if it corrupted their augmentations?” Hauler demanded. “Cliffjumper’s glass gas, Windcharger’s magnetism, Huffer and Brawn’s strength—what would happen to them?!”

Ratchet swallowed hard, glancing at the Minibots to find that in the short span where he had looked away, the rest of them had sat up also, all optics fixed on him, pressing for an answer. “I suppose…” he began reluctantly, “…that I’d have to remove them.”

There was almost ten full kliks of silence and then Huffer made a breakthrough as the first of the Minibots to make a sound since they had entered. He gasped, squeezed the sides of the berth until the metal screeched in his hands, and then burst into tears.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In case any were interested, the briefly mentioned story of Inferno's accident on his last rescue is here: [Defying Gravity](http://archiveofourown.org/works/4874695)


	13. Chapter 13

Jazz wasn’t very surprised by the clear tap on his office door. Judging by how brief the knock was, there was only one Bot it could be. Turning his music down seven or eight notches, he called, “S’open, Prowler!”

There was a long pause in which Jazz could visualize his friend venting deeply on the other side of the doors, trying to ignore the nickname he so despised. His estimate was pretty close, Jazz mused as the entryway finally opened and Prowl strode smoothly in, still in the process of calming his irritated expression.

“I came to receive your mission report,” Prowl informed him, optics sidling toward Jazz’s feet, which been firmly perched in their established place on top of the desk instead of underneath it. Noticing the disapproving glance, Jazz hummed innocently, wiggling his feet in something not unlike a wave.

“Should be…somewhere around here,” he proclaimed, gesturing vaguely to the shelves of data pads lining the walls. Prowl eyed them with some unease but nonetheless approached the one closest, pulling each pad out to quickly check the date and then find others with more promise. Jazz watched with a raised eyebrow and a content smile as Prowl almost absentmindedly rearranged each shelf in chronological order.

“To be honest,” Prowl began as he crouched, folding his doorwings behind him as he began on the lower shelves, “I didn’t expect to find you here.”

“Ahh, go ahead and say it: I’m a mover and a shaker,” Jazz told him, already starting to snap. “ _Hoppin’ and a-boppin’ and a-singin’ his song_ —Rockin’ Robin, that’s one of Bluesy’s favorite songs, y’know. He particularly likes the part where the robin out-bops the buzzard and the oriole.”

Jazz’s opposite eyebrow rose to join the other as he noticed a twitch in Prowl’s doorwings at the reference. “Oooh…Prowler, did he say—”

“He never clarified for Smokescreen and I which of us was which,” Prowl interrupted dryly. “Personally I hope for the oriole.”

Jazz stifled a chuckle and went smoothly on, “So you didn’t expect me to be here; where’d you think I’d be?”

“Well, I know I _hoped_ you would be with the Minibots.”

Jazz’s smile faltered just slightly and only for a nanoklik, but he turned his private music off entirely. “What for?”

There was another twitch of Prowl’s doorwings, indicating some kind of displeasure, but he smoothed the movement while he rose to his feet and sought after the mission report on another shelving unit. “To give them an appraisal on their battle. You are their trainer, aren’t you?”

This was slightly concerning, Jazz decided, shifting his feet closer to the edge of the desk. “True thing, but they got pretty banged up. I didn’t wanna jump ’em right after they did so well.”

At that Prowl stopped being casual altogether, turning to face him with an incredulous stare. “In what way did they do well?”

“Ways,” Jazz was quick to correct, folding his arms authoritatively. “And there were quite a few of them. Some of the strategy they used was exactly what we’d planned and it _worked_!” He knew Prowl could admire a sound strategy, particularly when it came from him, since so many people underestimated Jazz’s intelligence due to his laidback way of life.

“True as that may be, they lost!” Prowl stated, considering a nanoklik later how that might be taken. “That wasn’t your fault, Jazz. If you’re defending them simply because _you_ don’t want to be judged for their loss—”

“Oh, no, I want to,” Jazz interrupted, taking his feet off the desk and leaning his folded arms onto it instead. At Prowl’s disbelieving blink, he continued, “Sure, we may not’ve crumpled Devy up into a little tin can, but you should’ve _seen_ what Brawn did! As soon as Huffer got slammed—”

“Please, don’t make me start in on him!” Prowl lamented, though Jazz could tell by his tone that it was already too late to stop him. “Huffer let himself be preyed upon, obviously distracted the others, and was badly injured because he had a poor response time and no confidence! He didn’t have enough self-control to keep his doubts about himself in check for the sake of the others. Now we have an Autobot who presently can’t transform, five more who are unable to rely on him, and a combiner who is turning out _not_ to be the asset everyone is believing and hoping them to be!”

Jazz listened patiently to the rant Prowl was giving him, reminding himself that all of this was simply another sign that Prowl trusted him. Optimus had already informed him of the conversation they’d had about Prowl’s misgivings—and the resulting admonishing of the SIC. Jazz could tell that Prowl wasn’t trying to cut around Optimus; he was just hoping for someone to understand.

If there was anyone who would be open to receiving a rant, it would be Jazz.

Once Prowl seemed as though he had finished, half-turning back toward the data pads, Jazz answered solemnly, “Sure, the little guy did all those things. He also saved Bumblebee’s life.”

That almost instantly drew the Praxian’s attention back to him. “What are you talking about?”

Jazz tilted his helm, rewarding the question with an unusually sad smile. “Bee, as you probably know, is the chest, right? He’s the safekeeper for their sparks while they’re combined. When Cliffjumper got twisted around the back by Bonecrusher—”

Jazz rose, coming around the desk and gesturing for Prowl to offer up his arm. His friend did so hesitantly and Jazz grasped it firmly, pulling it behind his back just quickly enough to be painful. Prowl hissed, obviously taken aback by the gesture, and turned his frame into the lock so he could meet Jazz face to face.

“—Windcharger tried to do what you just did,” Jazz told him, nodding to Prowl’s arm acting as the barrier between them. “That’s when Mixmaster kicked Huffer. It was just somethin’ you had to see…but I _did_. Even while he was separatin’, he was pulling them back the way they’d come so they _wouldn’t_ meet Devy head-on. If they had, with Cliff still bein’ twisted and Windcharger in the middle of turnin’, the chest would be completely exposed.” Finally releasing Prowl’s arm, Jazz concluded, “They could’ve been ended right there.”

Prowl let his arm drop back to his side, not quite meeting Jazz’s optics. “Alright, that was a good move,” he admitted. “Commendable.”

“Yep, I’d say so,” Jazz agreed with another small smile which dropped a klik or two afterward. “There is somethin’ I’m not sure of though.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah. Why’d you lie t’me?”

Prowl’s brows knit and Jazz spread his arms out questioningly. “You just proved to me that you _knew_ Devastator had been targetin’ Huffer and that he got distracted, but you _came here_ for the mission report. Supposedly. Why’d you really come?”

Prowl vented evenly for a minute or two before huffing softly and muttering, “All the times I tell _Bluestreak_ to think before he speaks…”

“Guess it runs in the family,” Jazz shrugged, returning to the question. “So why?”

“I suppose I was…hoping for someone to validate my beliefs,” Prowl confessed falteringly. “For the tactical officer, I’ve seen many of my tactics rejected these past few days. Even in the battle where they combined for the first time…they acted before I could give them a strategy. I’ll always wonder if they had stopped to listen for just a nanoklik, if this whole debacle might have been prevented.”

He hesitated. “After Hauler told us Megatron would be targeting Indomitus in the next battle, Optimus offered the job of training them to _me_. Right after reprimanding me for underestimating them. I declined—and I pray to Primus that Optimus took it politely!—and then you received the assignment. Of course I didn’t _like_ being scolded…and I felt that Optimus might have been trying to, ah…spite me, perhaps, with his offer. I know that’s not the right word, but what it all comes down to is that I might have been hoping they would be defeated. So I could feel that I’d been…proved right.”

Jazz pursed his lips as he digested this information. He could see near the end that Prowl had been forcing out the words; his doorwings were low and limp in their owner’s obvious shame.

“Y’know, Prowl, I was expectin’ you to walk away without admittin’ all of that,” Jazz remarked at length, causing the SIC to look up in surprise. “I had half a processor made up that you would think you didn’t have to explain yourself to me. But I’m really, really glad you did.” Face softening, Jazz placed a hand on Prowl’s shoulder.

“Umm…thank you,” Prowl said at last, his doors perking up almost hopefully. The sight made Jazz want to laugh but he kindly refrained.

“Sure thing. Do not judge a warrior by stature or action until you truly understand that which drives him.”

Prowl shifted, almost uncomfortably but more with interest. “That sounds like a quote.”

“It is!” Jazz assured him. “I’m quoting the head COP, Prowl.”

Prowl had no answer but to stare blankly and Jazz grinned, clarifying, “COP. That’s the Covenant of Primus.” Before he could go on to tell him which verse, there was another knock that caught his audial, a rapid drumming. “Blaster!” he exclaimed, whirling around and waving enthusiastically. “Come on in. How’s my favorite tapedeck?”

“Just curious, Maestro,” Blaster answered, sticking his helm into the room. “You hear the new song bein’ tuned up?”

Jazz shared a questioning glance with Prowl and Blaster took that as cue. “The doc just left the med bay—hummin’ somethin’ about lettin’ Hauler deal with someone’s blues—and told Wheeljack that he’s workin’ up some strings that’ll let the Minis loose of their combining!”

By the comm. officer’s abrupt stilling, Jazz and Prowl knew he was realizing they weren’t sure what they thought about that idea.


	14. Chapter 14

“So your commanding officer, Fishtail, has ordered you from Autobot Outpost Kappa Four to Earth?” Red Alert studied his friend critically, seeking after an uncharacteristic reaction. It wasn’t often they received supplies or reports from Cybertron, much less visitors, and he had to be absolutely certain the medic before him, long thought to be deactivated, hadn’t been flipped in their time apart.

“Yes, for a short time we managed to capture Shockwave’s end of the Decepticon spacebridge,” Pacemaker explained, sipping his energon cube before continuing, “They thought I would be the best emissary, since I can give an accurate report on everyone’s health, as well as Con activity.”

While Pacemaker had changed, Red Alert attributed it to his lengthening age and was able to put his mind at ease—that corner of his mind at least. It wasn’t long before he tensed again as the rec room doors slid open and the resident troublemakers waltzed into the room. The twins were laughing about something or another and Red Alert knew he had to prepare himself for a prank of the worst variety. He glanced uneasily to Pacemaker, who had also noticed their presence and was surprised to see he wasn’t at all worried about potential mischief. Instead he was smiling widely, optics glowing with pride, excitement…even _love_.

 _Oh! These are his nephews!_ Red Alert remembered suddenly, making a quick note of it in his mental folder. Had they inherited their kin’s sense of humor? Was that where they had gotten so many of their torturous ideas? He couldn’t help but wonder, but before he could ask Pacemaker that question Red Alert noticed them moving toward the Minibots’ table.

Red straightened very slowly, a few backstrut links at a time, making sure they saw him. Sideswipe and Sunstreaker just loved to play jokes on the Minis, but judging from the smaller Bots’ somber faces and the way Huffer occasionally rubbed at his eyes and hunched further down on the bench, a prank was _not_ going to be received well. It rarely ever was.

“Hey!” Sideswipe chirped cheerfully, waving at the pace, who met the gesture with wary expressions. “How goes it with our favorite set of agreeing magnets? We heard you got a little—ah, tweaky in the last battle—”

“If you’re here to lord it over us, you better walk away now,” Cliffjumper threatened, curling his hands into fists on the tabletop.

Sunstreaker rolled his optics. “Don’t be a sparkling, Cliffjumper. We’re here to tell you that we thought it was quite a thing you did afterward, taking on Devastator in your _separate_ forms!”

“It was Devastator’s fault, too. He shouldn’t’ve underestimated you!” Sideswipe agreed enthusiastically. “He thought just cos you’re small, you’re no threat, but you’ve got pretty big bearings!”

The pace’s stiff frames gradually eased, Brawn even managing a grin. Red Alert was pleased as well, seeing as the usually tense relations between these particular Bots were relaxing. Perhaps he wouldn’t have to intervene.

“Well, thanks, brothers. It’s just what you would’ve done for each other,” Windcharger replied courteously.

“You should do that again the next time so we can see it,” Sunstreaker encouraged. “We may be able to help you come up with some new maneuvers that’ll put Devastator out of commission permanently!”

“Not that we think you need it, but it’d be cool to see some of our moves from the outside, not while doing them,” Sideswipe jumped in. “You don’t mind that we’re offering to help, right?”

They were really lathering it on, Red Alert noticed, a bit amused by the sight. Pacemaker was stifling his laughter in his energon cube, his optics even brighter as he watched his family praise the surprised sextet.

Sideswipe then glanced theatrically over his shoulder before jamming a thumb in the direction of another table. “I just heard from Mirage and that group that the doc has a way of taking the gestalt thing away from you, but that it might take away your augmentations too. Is that true?”

It was indeed true, but Red Alert was more concerned with how everyone else had come to find out. It must have been one of the more openmouthed officers, Jazz or Blaster, spreading the news.

“No secrecy,” he mumbled in a pedal tone. “Perhaps that’s a good thing, but when information comes _prematurely_ to the hands of Bots like these…” Even more than that, he had hoped the pace would have gotten some privacy to think over their decision.

“You’re so awesome in battle!” Sideswipe was saying, Sunstreaker nodding vigorous agreement. “You’re a game-changer, guys, even more than before! Are you really going to let them take that away from you?”

Sunstreaker then stopped nodding, frowning in puzzlement. “Why would they take it away from them, Sides? It’s _not_ the officers’ prerogative; the gestalt members get to choose for themselves.”

Faltering, Sideswipe seemed as though he were pretending to consider before stating emphatically, “For themselves? You mean for _all_ of us.” Sunstreaker frowned more deeply and Sideswipe spread his arms out wide. “What? It’s true! Like I just said, Indomitus is a game-changer.”

“But they’re the ones being affected by this,” Sunstreaker argued. “It’s _their_ choice!”

Much as Sunstreaker had at Cliffjumper, Sideswipe rolled his optics at him. “Come on, Sunny! Even Prime knows we weren’t winning the fight before this showed up, even with the pace’s powers. Now the pace goes and chooses to negate the better of the two and actually risk negating _both?_ No, that doesn’t just affect them, that’ll affect all of us. It affects the cause itself! It means we’re the ones who’ll have to bust our afterburners picking up after what we lost! We should get to choose!”

“Are you kidding?!” Sunstreaker demanded, the volume of his vocals skyrocketing. “Since when does a Bot not have the freedom to choose his function in the Autobots? What are we now— _functionists_? The _caste system?!_ ”

It was astonishing how just four words could set off Red Alert’s internal alarms, as well as everyone else’s. Anyone who had been minding their own business and convincing themselves not to eavesdrop on the corner table’s conversation were now whirling around and even half-rising from their benches, optics wide, mouths dropping.

Red Alert’s gaze raced to each of the bystanders, assessing them for a threat to the already-wavering peace. Wheeljack, who had been considered ‘middle-class’ for his engineering and was generally good-natured, wouldn’t cause a problem. Grapple, by his own admission a ‘high-class artist’, on the other hand—and oh, good Primus, Sideswipe had mentioned _Mirage_. Sure enough, there he was, expression grim but otherwise unreadable. Ironhide, dutiful soldier that he was and always had been, could go either way despite his rank.

That could very well be a problem.

“What’s your problem, Sunny?!” Sideswipe asked angrily, easily matching his brother’s volume. “You never hesitate to say what you think!”

“And _I think_ it’s their choice! Is that clear enough for you?” Sunstreaker snarled back, starting to loom in a manner that Red Alert suspected would precede a coming of blows.

For better or for worse, for delaying or encouraging the inevitable, Grapple hurried from his position across the room, calling out, “Wait a moment! I think I should get a say in whether or not I put myself—or my creations—in any more peril!”

Sideswipe latched onto that, jabbing a finger at the scientist. “See, see?! He agrees with me!”

“Now look here,” Ironhide cut in, making his presence known simply by standing up. “Havin’ an opinion’s all well an’ good—and we’re not functionists here—but the Minibots need t’ feel the freedom t’ choose their own fate!”

“And what about _our_ fate?” Mirage questioned incredulously. “Aren’t we entitled to choose _our_ function? We don’t want to be cannon fodder because our leading cannon has decided to step down from its position!”

“They never were our lead cannon!” Sunstreaker shot back, armor bristling defensively as he moved more fully in front of the table, as though to shield the current subjects of conversation. “And it’s not as if we can decide to step down either now that they are.”

“You just said we don’t have the right to avoid the job chosen for us: fighting!” Sideswipe cried accusingly. “So it looks like _I’m_ not the one investing in functionism!”

“Says the one always so eager to fight!” Wheeljack protested, finally getting dragged into the argument.

Urgently Red Alert ran through the possible ways to defuse the increasingly agitated scene before anyone actually took a swing. Sideswipe seemed closest to doing so and he was being faced by both Sunstreaker and Ironhide. If by some horrible chance he swung for the officer first, it would be a _nightmare_ among the senior staff. If he swung at Sunstreaker, there was a good chance the Minibots would retaliate since the yellow twin was standing up for them, which would make it a nightmare for the subordinates. Complaints would be sent to the senior staff, which would make it a nightmare for all involved.

He wasn’t involved, therefore as of yet he hadn’t decided which group he sided with. How could he dissolve the dispute while remaining on equal footing?

“I say we put it to a vote!” Grapple announced stridently, distracting Red Alert from his calculations. “Right now!”

“Can I vote against?” Sunstreaker snapped.

“Well, I vote we _don’t_ vote on either!” Ironhide countered resolutely. “Any takers?”

Folding his arms and glaring steadily at his brother, Sunstreaker barked, “Second!”

“Third!” Wheeljack agreed, the light of his audial strobes waning slightly as he hesitated. “Wait a minute. I think we just voted not to vote on voting…so does it count?”

“Not at all!” another voice interrupted, startling Red Alert. He had been so busy sizing up the others, he had forgotten the Bot sitting right in front of him. Pacemaker rose, features tight and sharp with remembered pain. “The only thing you need to know for sure is that nonconsensual medical operations are too dangerous! It’s up to them to make the decision—”

“Go ding your diodes somewhere else, traitor!” Gears burst out, reminding everyone that the subject of the conversation was actually in the room with them and simultaneously confusing them, as Pacemaker was speaking in their defense. “Somewhere that isn’t in our business!”

“ _Gears!_ ” Brawn hissed reprovingly, but it was already too late. Gears was getting to his feet, Cliffjumper and Windcharger with him.

“You have no say in what we do, despite what you may think,” Cliffjumper growled, EM field audibly crackling and visibly turning dark. “If you want a say with Brawn’s pace, you work with the wrong crowd.”

Red Alert began checking his databanks, trying to find a reason for their hostility. It had something to do with Brawn, since Cliffjumper had singled him out, not referring to the group as ‘our’ pace. Brawn and Pacemaker had no previous connections, did they?

Windcharger’s hands were in very tight fists, indicating he was finding it hard to refrain from activating his magnetism. “Did you honestly think we wouldn’t figure it out?” he spat. “Brawn physically _stumbled_ when he heard your designation. He never does that, which means you must be some kind of stumbling block for him. Then I remembered doing the research for him, so he could send a message to someone at your base: Ignition, a member of the pace he _used_ to have!”

“Those ties have been broken, Unraveled,” Gears stated menacingly. “So you just sit back down and keep your mouth shut about us!”

At Sideswipe opening his mouth to defend his sire’s twin, Red Alert finally took a simple, brief action. He stood, radiating cold silence and indicating that the Minibots should follow his example. The three offenders took the hint, shoving through the apprehensive group and storming out of the rec room. Brawn, Huffer, and Bumblebee, almost in sync, bowed their helms over their energon. After a horrible, frozen moment, everyone else decided to do the same.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hmm...let's just say that paces get possessive of their leader. 00;
> 
> For more on Pacemaker's opinion about non-con remedies, search for the Transformers: Prime story "As We Are".  
> For more on Ignition and the rest of Brawn's Unraveled pace, search for the Transformers: Prime story "Highest Honors".


	15. Chapter 15

Optimus’ spark sank at the weighty stack of data pads which had found its way onto his desktop sometime during the night. He had a sickeningly accurate feeling that most, if not all, of the messages from the crew had something to do with the situation in the rec room yesterday. Ironhide had come to him hastily after the incident and had explained what happened, making a point of saying who he thought should be considered at fault for the incident.

“At the very least, I’m sorry Pacemaker’s already causin’ trouble,” Ironhide sighed. “He didn’t mean t’ make that sort o’ scene an’ really, none of us expected them t’ react like that!”

Pulling an energon cube out of his desk drawer, Optimus unlatched his facemask, took a sip and winced at how sour it tasted, but that could just be the effect of the data pad he was now reading:

_Optimus Prime,_

_Before the stream of complaints start flooding in, I was hoping you would take the time to read what I have to say on the matter of what happened in the rec room, plus what my opinions are on Indomitus himself._

_Wheeljack has reminded me that he was strictly neutral in the setting mentioned, but I think I speak for both of us when I say what has happened to the Minibots and the following incidents among the rest of the crew are what scientists like ourselves consider loosely to be ‘ **dark science** ’—essentially, not something to be touched or even entertained._

_Unfortunately, Prime, I can only believe that relations between/about Indomitus and the crew will only worsen. I don’t know what you are considering to do about this problem, but I’m afraid I must side with the group against leaving it to the gestalt members’ choice. I do it reluctantly, but I must admit that it’s true they aren’t the only ones affected._

_Sincerely Concerned,_

_Perceptor_

Venting deeply, Optimus pushed aside his energon cube and picked up the next pad, finding it much the same, despite what some may think since it was from the other point of view:

_Prime,_

_I don’t know what the point is, putting all of this is up for debate, but since everyone except Red seems intent on demanding my opinion, I’ve given in and sent it to the top. I don’t want to be a bother, Optimus, so I’ll just say that I think the Minibots are good mechs and they deserve the chance to prove it. I know they’ll make the right choice: whatever’s safest!_

_“But safest for who?” everyone is saying. Well, not everyone gets a say in how Minis **think**. I’m no expert on their culture and whatnot, which is just proving my point, but from what I’ve seen, they’ll put their pace-mates ahead of themselves **and** outsiders. I just hope that if you decide to try influencing their decision, you’ll help them choose whatever’s safest for all involved. It’s easier said or written than done, that’s for sure, but all the vorns I’ve known you, you’ve been the best I know at it. That’s even surer. _

_– Inferno_

There were some which physically hurt his spark when he discovered them, simply because he sensed that what he read was a Bot pouring out their spark to him. It forced him to wonder if these more sensitive Bots were being forced into projecting themselves as Inferno had implied that he was.

_Optimus Prime,_

         _I don’t want to take up any more of your time or processor with this, so I’ll keep it short. My fellow scientists are in an uproar about what’s going to happen with Indomitus and I wish I could say I understood their feelings, but my feelings on the matter are that we need to calm down and discuss a solution rationally like the adult frames we are—or at least, like we are in theory._

_I suspect that’s what you would suggest and I wish they could realize it too. It feels like another (please pardon the pun!) mini war has begun and started splitting our faction. I’m even seeing the old disdain between the rough-and-tumble Bots and my fellow scientists again…_

_Skids_

 

_Prime, sir,_

_To be frank, I’m worried for the Minibots—not just for whatever choice they’re going to make and how the rest of the Autobots are going to take it, but how **they’re** going to take it. There are some of them whose reputations and rapport weren’t and haven’t been that great, even before this entire dilemma, and even those who do have good relations with the others can be sensitive to those others’ opinions sometimes. I’m concerned for Bumblebee in particular. _

_He’s been…I can only come up with the term “quiet”, and he’s never seen anywhere or with anyone but his pace now. I know this can be seen as supporting them just as they support him, but I mean that he seems like he’s starting to get separation anxiety. I’m not a medic or a psychologist, so I can’t say I know what that looks like, but I wanted to let you know so you’ll be seeing all of the facts, not just how both sides stand._

_I can’t help but feel that there’s third side we’re not taking into account: **theirs**. What if they want to choose whether or not to make a choice? What if they want to leave it up to us? All I can hope for is that we’ll have Primus’ wisdom to actually make us worthy of that._

_Hoping this helps,_

_Hound_

Gradually Optimus made his way through the pile, adding more and more of a burden to his processor, until he came upon one near the bottom of the stack, which meant it had been one of the first written and submitted. Upon opening it, he could see it was only a paragraph; the author had to be one of the more forthright members of his crew. He glanced at the opener, did a double take, and then leaned further back in his chair, optics softening with delight at the words.

_Fraggit, Prime!_

_You have to do something about this. All this drama is getting out of hand, so I’d like to make a clear request that you order all these Bots to blow it out their exhaust ports. In the end, it’s **not** going to be up to the Minibots, it’s going to be up to **me** , because I’ll be the one enacting whatever their choice is! However, I’m not going to be much help if I’ve moved to one of the underground parking garages in the nearby city due to every single Autobot exasperating me. You’ll probably give me grief for this obvious threat. I’ll be expecting you._

There wasn’t even a signout, but Optimus didn’t need one. Chuckling, the Prime rose from his chair, re-securing his facemask as he entered the outer hallway and stoutly ignoring any curious glances his crew gave him, conveying their silent questions. If he wasn’t supplied with the patience of a Prime, he may very well have been just as exasperated with them as the mech he was going to see.

“It took you longer to get through that stack than I would’ve expected,” Ratchet announced as the med bay doors slid open. Optimus watched him with affection as he pretended to examine a tool, polishing nonexistent dirt or oil from it, and then laid it down and turned to face him.

“Well? Are you going to give my words to the Bots?”

“I don’t think they would pay any heed to me if I used your exact words,” Optimus answered tactfully. “They would know it came from you.”

“I don’t care if they know, as long as it gets the job done!” Ratchet burst out. “All of this infighting about _the almighty choice_ is eating not just at my nerves, but at theirs! Can you imagine what it would be like if the Decepticons attacked now? Everyone is so divided about this, I wouldn’t put it past them to hesitate at defending a comrade who didn’t agree with them. And that’s over this—this beryllium baloney?!” Perching on the side of one of the medical berths, Ratchet concluded, “The way Ironhide tells the scene in the rec room, if Red Alert hadn’t done his little intimidation technique, Gears could’ve brought it to a head and gone after someone, and Windcharger wouldn’t have been a _nanoklik_ behind him!”

“I wouldn’t have been surprised if any of the Minibots had acted on that urge,” Optimus pointed out. “They’re under high stress now because of the infighting…But those two in particular, I have a feeling they would have done so simply out of their passion for freedom.”

Confusion fleetingly crossed Ratchet’s features, forcing half a question from him: “What does that have to do—” He stopped himself short, realizing and digesting it, continuing more solemnly, “Well, I wouldn’t blame them. Freedom’s hard-won for them.”

“It is for all of us,” Optimus reminded him. “And that seems to be what every Autobot is forgetting—we all are fighting in our own ways, with whatever we can contribute to the cause, and no one combiner or six separate Minibots or even one unconnected Autobot, considered plain or Prime, will win the war for us.” Massaging his forehelm and neck, he continued pleadingly, “We have to work together—as one, till all are one—and how will that happen if we’re too busy imposing our wills on each other? Then we’re just like the caste system, like the functionists, and like the Decepticons.”

“Preach it, Prime, just not to me; I already know where you’re coming from,” Ratchet assured him. “But I will admit I’m slightly surprised to be thinking you’re standing by Sideswipe.”

Optimus shook his helm at that. “No, I’m not. We’re all arguing for freedom—both for ourselves and for others, and that means we’re all arguing for the _same_ side.”

Ratchet nodded contemplatively, his face darkening a little after a minute or two. “Whatever the outcome, there could very well be consequences of their choice and I’m afraid the worst of the fallout will be for them, not everyone else.”

“In that case, Ratchet, let me seat myself. I suggest you inform me of the potential.”


	16. Chapter 16

“Are you okay, Scrapper? Is there anything I can do to help? Anything I can get? What about Hook? Is he going to be okay?” As much as Scavenger wanted to, he couldn’t really stop the stream of questions bursting from his mouth.

“I need to _focus_ , Scavenger, in order to find out!” Scrapper hollered over him, a growl surfacing in both his vocals and engine as energon trickled from his forehelm and onto his visor. From there it slid and plopped onto Hook’s frame, just another drop amidst the mess on and in his chest.

Those words and the unsaid accusation behind them stung a little bit, but Scavenger knew his leader was speaking out of a place of stress. As creative and constructive as all of them were, Hook was their _medic_ and by some cruel twist of fate he was the most critically wounded. With Bonecrusher’s help, Scrapper had awkwardly dragged him onto his own surgical table, where he now lay with an unnerving amount of complacency.

Scavenger impulsively glanced past Scrapper’s shoulder, earning another growl, but for a nanoklik he paid no attention, more focused on Hook. His visor’s glow was dimmed but holding steadily, meaning he was technically ‘awake’, but Scavenger could feel that even in the gestalt bond he was unmoving. Hook was the chest, the conduit for their sparks, which made the difference starkly noticeable. It was throwing all of them off balance.

Scrapper was now hunched over him with a bloodied rag in his left hand—which he occasionally wrung out onto the floor at his feet—and a welder in his right hand, with which he was doing his best to hastily weld Hook’s chassis back together.

“Who did this?” Scavenger asked tentatively, reaching a hand toward the violently-created gouge. Whoever it was had aim good enough to punch the chest component in his _literal_ chest.

“That tricursed Minibot leader,” Scrapper spat. “If _he_ had been the leg we were targeting, this never would’ve—Scavenger, hands off, _now!_ ”

Since Scrapper was armed with a welder and was obviously not in a patient mood, Scavenger burst out, “Of course, of course, sorry,” and danced backward, surveying each of the other gestalt members. Of all the Constructions he had somehow received the least damage in their fight with the new Autobot gestalt. He would’ve expected that to be Long Haul, since he was the…erm, lower chassis, which no one ever aimed for…but Scavenger suspected he’d seen some dirty fighters among the components of their enemy.

“Indomitus,” he murmured, committing the name to memory as he moved to Bonecrusher’s side. “Hey, how are you holding up? I noticed their Cliffjumper arm tussling with you.”

“He was hardly a match for me!” Bonecrusher barked, shifting his stance as though he hoped Scavenger wouldn’t notice the brittle, ‘frostbitten’ cracks Cliffjumper’s glass gas had created along his lower right side and right arm.

“I didn’t imply that he was,” Scavenger assured him, gesturing to the injury and commenting pointedly, “Would some sealant help with that?”

Lifting his voice, Bonecrusher answered, “Long Haul stole it!”

“No, I got to it first!” Long Haul shot back from where he was slathering far too much of the substance over the cracks and dents on his lower legs, caused by Windcharger’s deadly magnetism.

“I can brew up another batch,” Mixmaster interrupted before Bonecrusher could consider retaliating. “Once I, ahh, manage to get up!”

“Well, since half of your left leg’s been squeezed into slag, I don’t think I can wait for that!” Bonecrusher informed him savagely.

“Hey, hey, _slag!_ That’s it! Would a cane help you, Maxi?” Scavenger offered. “I think I have some spare scrap that can be made into one!”

Mixmaster looked startled at the proposal but before he could say no Scavenger raced out of base to his treasure horde, a storage unit he had taken control of out on a barren area of the humans’ land. Eagerly he gathered up anything he could find that could potentially be twisted into a staff-like shape, sizing up each part and how well it would fit in someone’s hand.

As he worked, Scavenger laughed a little at the mental image of Mixmaster still using the cane once he had recovered, but for a different purpose: stirring the huge cauldrons he sometimes used to create his concoctions. As he was about to leave, he seized a can of something that might be useful in the making of the sealant and shoved it on the top of the pile, which he dragged into his subspace for the journey back.

When he returned, he found Bonecrusher, the only other one who could presently be on his feet, crowding Scrapper’s back. He opened his end of the bond, about to inform him through his strand of it that the tetchy leader wouldn’t appreciate that, but Long Haul silenced him by sending a look that was uncharacteristically worried.

“C’mon, Scrap!” Mixmaster urged, looking as though he dearly wished he could rise. “You need to sit down!”

“I need to fix Hook, so he can fix us,” Scrapper countered calmly, keeping his gaze focused on his work.

“Hey! Did the bash you took blow your processor?” Bonecrusher demanded, folding his arms with the cracked one closer to his body. “Next thing you know, you’ll slip up cos you can’t see straight and you’ll kill him.”

“Don’t even joke about that, Bonecrusher!” Scrapper barked, whirling around and then wavering, drawing in his vents with a hiss and fumbling for the edge of the table to grasp.

“You got a helm injury. Who said I was joking?” Bonecrusher asked stonily, grabbing his elbow, snatching the welder away from him and steering him toward a crate where he could sit. Scrapper went reluctantly but didn’t fight him, resting his elbows on his knees and his face in his hands. The other Constructicons glanced at each other uneasily. Scrapper was the one who was never vulnerable, never weak. They weren’t supposed to see him like this.

Bonecrusher’s temper and harsh form of protectiveness were flaring; that was obvious in how his visor flashed a darker shade than usual. “Long Haul,” he snapped, squeezing Scrapper’s nearest shoulder in a visibly painful grip, “go ask Megatron what he wants us to do. Hook is our medic; we can’t function without him! Bring some help!”

“Do I look like I’m in a condition to be your gofer?!” Long Haul gestured spastically to his damaged legs and feet.

At these words Mixmaster took on a face of determination, wedging his fingers into a groove in the wall and trying to use it as leverage to hoist himself up. Scavenger saw the strain on his one good leg and opened his subspace, dumping the pile of machinery onto the floor.

“I’ll do it! I’ll bring help!” he assured them, scurrying down the hall so Mixmaster wouldn’t manage to get entirely upright and walking. If he did, Scavenger suspected there would be disastrous results, perhaps even for the long-term. Scavenger wouldn’t have been able to watch that, knowing he could’ve helped, even if it did mean facing Megatron…right after a defeat…

Surprisingly enough, Scavenger had never actually been in the room for what the other Decepticons called Megatron’s PDSTs: Post-Defeat Screaming Tantrums. The other Constructions had always managed to steer him toward the med bay, where they spent most of their out-of-battle time, a few nanokliks before they happened. Of course Scavenger _heard_ them; all Decepticons heard them from anywhere in the ship and often wondered if Megatron actively made sure they did, just to instill fresh fear of him and his wrath.

The only one not catching the hint was the one encouraging the arrival of this particular tantrum, Scavenger saw, swallowing as he slunk into the command room, trying to make himself as small as possible while still able to be noticed. Neither occupant of the room saw him yet, all too taken up with staring each other down.

“How fare the almighty Constructicons, Megatron?” Starscream was inquiring with far too much civility, his smirk betraying how much he was enjoying this. “You remember the ones who were supposedly going to win the war for us with their strength? Perhaps you should be off comforting them; I expect it would hurt to be defeated by the smallest members of the Autobot team!”

Scavenger could see now why Megatron was avoided during this time. He loomed higher and higher over Starscream, shadowing his sneering face with his sheer bulk towering. “Starscream,” the warlord rumbled, his vocals deeper and rattling perilously like the reptilian creatures of this world, “even the smallest Autobots—even the smallest _humans!_ —would fare better under my treatment of them than _you_ are about to if you don’t—”

Impulsively Scavenger cleared his throat and Megatron cooled slightly, though there was an awful nanoklik where he turned his enraged gaze on him, made brighter by being interrupted. “Ah,” he said shortly, turning his back on Starscream. “There is a Construction, Starscream. Since you appear so invested in their wellbeing, go with him and learn their status.”

That implied an order to him to take Starscream back and Scavenger wasn’t about to refuse that, gesturing sharply for Starscream to follow him. The Seeker did so, fuming at being dismissed.

“Megatron believes he’s so mighty,” he hissed as they went down the hall, “when, really, it was his fault we suffered a defeat! You do know he’s the reason your gestalt is so wounded, don’t you?” At Scavenger’s nervous, noncommittal noise, Starscream huffed. “Of course it is. Well, sooner rather than later, I’m going to be calling the shots, and Devastator will win the war for _me_ , not Megatron!”

It was rather rude to speak of a mech bowing to one’s will when a component of that mech was walking with you, Scavenger mused grumpily as he stepped aside for Starscream to enter the med bay. As the Seeker passed, Scavenger stiffened, inclining his helm hastily as Soundwave stepped past him, scanning the oblivious Starscream’s back and opening his chest hatch for Laserbeak to enter. The bird did so with a beep that signaled the end of a recording and then the comm. officer went briskly on his way. Scavenger almost felt sorry for how the rest of Starscream’s day was likely to go as he followed him into the room.

That feeling ceased when Starscream disdainfully toed at a piece of his machinery, remarking snidely, “So this is what the mighty Devastator is made of? I never thought he could come apart so easily!”

“ _This_ is the help you brought?!” Bonecrusher demanded in disgust, causing Scavenger to shrug hesitantly. “That’s your problem, Scav: all you bring home is junk!”

Starscream bristled, wings flaring imperiously, but of course that failed to threaten the Constructions, who were too damaged or angry to care. “How are the repairs going?” Starscream asked emphatically, nodding toward Hook, who still looked as though he were in stasis on the surgical table. “From the looks of you, he’s been recharging on the job.”

Bonecrusher rose from where he’d sat beside Scrapper, jabbing a finger at Starscream. “Get him out of my sight, Scavenger, or I’ll put his helm so far up his afterburners, his exhaust pipe will _become_ his intake valve!” he bellowed. Starscream took that as his cue to bolt, bounding back outside without Scavenger’s help. There was a short silence, far too relaxed to be normal among them. Scavenger shared a glance with Mixmaster, who wiggled his foot with a wince and then broke the quiet.

“Y’know, it’s no wonder to me that we lost to the little guys.”

“Oh, we didn’t know that. Thanks for enlightening us,” Long Haul snarked. Mixmaster tilted his helm in a way that meant he was rolling his optics behind his visor.

“Where do you think they learned those moves? ‘From a superior officer,’ would be the correct answer, but those were some of _our_ moves, fellas! So where would the officers learn about our moves? The correct answer, anyone? Who do you think is in the dredges of this mix?”

Long Haul’s face drained of all sarcasm into bitterness. “You guys said you’d never talk about him,” he growled, sounding quite jealous of the mech he’d replaced in their gestalt.

“Well, that was before Hauler began telling our new rivals how to slag us,” Mixmaster pointed out, motioning for Scavenger to approach a shelf on the opposite side of the room. “Now, we can keep not talking about it while I—meaning Scavvy here—make us something nice to drink.”

“Just make sure to get it right so we won’t feel any more pain today,” Scrapper requested wearily of them both, his sentence ended with a muffled bang, followed by Starscream crying out and Megatron howling.


	17. Chapter 17

Despite the conflict everyone else was involved in, Bluestreak was relatively happy. He had been allowed to recharge late since yesterday had been a near all-day shift, so that had been a restful break from the insanity of everyone else. He’d come online with a smile and had been content to simply stay in his room for now. _My talking may annoy some of the Bots,_ he mused as he got up to use the wash-racks, _but now it’s not my problem! Now they’re all annoyed with each other’s talking!_

Of course he felt sorry for the Minibots and the grueling decision they had to make, but he had a feeling that the best way to help them was to not get involved in the conflict. Thus he seized a data pad with one of his favorite stories recorded on it and leapt back onto his berth, letting the pad’s computerized voice, which sounded amusingly like Teletraan One, read the story to him.

Bluestreak grinned, propping the data pad on the nightstand to his left and curling up on his side, folding his doorwings behind him. The movement reminded him of when he was a sparkling in Praxus and Prowl would read it to him, sounding very serious, his doorwings betraying him by mimicking the gestures characters made. Those had been the days…

A beep interrupted his fond memory, making him sit up and study the inside of the door warily. Was it an officer coming to steal his relaxed day by giving him a sudden place on the duty roster? On an afterthought he sent a questioning ping through his spark bond, pleased to receive a wave of affirmative and a request which urged him to unlock the door.

He did so, stepping aside for his twin to enter. “Hey, Prowl! How’s your day been? Hopefully it’s been nice like mine has; mine’s been really great, cos remember how yesterday I was on the duty roster? Well, today I get my day off and I decided to spend it in here just because. I like how on an off day you can just spend it however you want! Haha, that’s the point of them, right? But I know what you’re gonna say: you should spend that time cleaning up your data files! I know I should, but I only wanted to spend my time on one file, it’s that story you used to—oh, wait! You _did_ come in here to say something, didn’t you? What is it?”

In the time that Bluestreak had gotten out his first burst of conversation, Prowl had swept inside, picked up the tarps that were on the floor, put them on the puddles of water in the wash-room, turned off the light Bluestreak had left on in there unnecessarily, and had paused the playback of the story on the data pad. He now held it in his hand, smiling faintly when he saw the title. Bluestreak enjoyed that nanoklik because when he looked up again the smile was gone.

“I just wanted to check up on you,” Prowl told him, his next words not as innocent: “And get your take on what’s been happening. I haven’t gotten to talk with you as often as I would prefer.”

Bluestreak’s own smile faded. His own brother had been pulled into the mess. Of course he had; Bluestreak couldn’t have expected anything else, what with how disoriented Prowl had been by the loss of control when the gestalt first appeared. After a long minute he shrugged slowly and shook his helm.

“Whatever they choose, it’ll be a big change.” Bluestreak watched Prowl react predictably to his short answer, face contorting and doorwings fluttering before one of them turned outward slightly, signaling puzzlement.

“And is that all?”

Bluestreak laughed a little but it didn’t hold much humor. “Well, that implies that I think they should make the choice. They’re the ones combining, so it’s hardest for them, so that means they need to be the ones deciding if they want to be set loose from it.” By their own volition, his own doorwings were lowering toward his hips but flaring, portraying suspicion. “And I mean, think about if it were us! We’re twins, so there’s always a combined part of us, but to literally become one mech? That’d be scary! I’d want to be rid of it as fast as possible! What about you? What’s your take?”

From what Bluestreak could feel through their bond, Prowl was unsure if he was pleased to be asked. “As you know I was very much against Indomitus at the beginning, but Jazz enlightened me to its—” He paused with a minute flinch and then forged onward. “—his usefulness. For the sake of the war I believe we should take all opinions into consideration when deciding whether or not to mistreat that usefulness.”

“But…wouldn’t taking away his own choice be misusing his usefulness?” Bluestreak questioned, pursing his lips when he felt a trickle of annoyance which Prowl swiftly quelled.

“Everyone ought to have a say in what happens for the safety of our team, Bluestreak,” his brother reminded him. Bluestreak leaned back, lifting an eyebrow and nudging back at the tension in their bond.

“Even those who say Indomitus ought to have his way?” Bluestreak may be oblivious sometimes, too wrapped up in his own mind just as Prowl could be, but he was starting to become aware that Prowl probably hadn’t come here to check on him, but in the hopes that he would agree with him. _He’s really taking this seriously…_

“Bluestreak,” Prowl repeated, starting to take on the talking-down voice the sniper truly hated, “combiners were and are known for not being incredibly intelligent—”

“Stop right there!” Bluestreak interrupted. “We’re not going there. I was having a perfectly nice day, so before I give into the urge to hike up my doorwings and yell at you, I want to get a cube of energon. If you want, you can come, but you and I aren’t going to discuss this, okay? I really don’t want to.”

Fleetingly Prowl looked as though he were going to be stubborn, but finally he relented, looking dissatisfied more than anything else. Nodding approval, Bluestreak led the way to the rec room, not leaving it up for debate. In fact they didn’t speak until the doors to the rec room opened and Bluestreak noticed Blaster sitting at one of the tables near the energon storeroom.

“Ooh, Blaster!” he exclaimed, bumping Prowl’s shoulder with his right wing. “C’mon, let’s go sit with him!” He considered getting the energon they’d come for beforehand, but right now he just wanted to get Prowl out of the rut he was in.

Blaster lit up when he saw the brothers, waving them over. “Well, if it isn’t Call-and-Response, bringin’ some life to the juke joint!”

Bluestreak rolled his optics good-naturedly at the terminology, sitting to Blaster’s right. Prowl sat on _his_ right, his back to the rest of the room.

“So what’s been happening on your end of things?” Blaster asked, folding his arms on the tabletop and leaning forward eagerly.

“Bluestreak was just telling me his view of the gestalt situation,” Prowl said flatly, earning a chill to Bluestreak’s smile.

 _~:You can just find a way around everything, can’t you?:~_ he grumbled through the bond.

 _~:I **am** the tactician, brother. Besides, I’m not discussing our previous topic with you. I’m discussing it with Blaster,:~_ was the cool response.

To Bluestreak’s relief, Blaster seemed noncommittal to the topic, huffing through his vents and resting his chin on one hand. “Ahh, that tune’s all the rage these days. I’ve heard enough of it through the comm. hub.”

 _Finally, someone sane like me, who doesn’t want to get involved. I knew sitting with him was a good idea!_ Bluestreak praised Primus in his processor, trying not to look too smug but unable to resist giving Prowl a sideways glance which was stoutly ignored but definitely not unnoticed.

“But in other news,” Blaster continued, “y’know how we all wondered if Ratchet would get jealous of Pacemaker, since he’s a chief medic too? Well, it turns out they’re actually friends! Word is they knew each other and worked together back when they were apprentices. They both danced their way to the top of the classes so fast, they were chief medics when their fellow classmates were still studying! Guess we never knew how finely tuned the doc is, right?”

Bluestreak nodded vigorously, hoping to engage Prowl in the new subject as well with his enthusiasm. Fortunately Prowl looked composed but interested, also nodding as he digested the information.

“Let’s hope he has wisdom paired with his knowledge,” he said offhandedly. “He’ll need it, but perhaps he’ll have the assistance of Pacemaker when he’s enacting whatever the Autobots choose.”

Though Prowl didn’t specify which Autobots he meant, Bluestreak had a feeling he already knew. He forced another laugh like the one in his room, holding even less humor. “Of course Ratchet has it! We’ve trusted him to pop the dents in our doorwings when they get damaged in battle, right?” To Blaster, he interrupted himself, “Not just anyone is allowed to do that. Doorwings are an important part of Praxian culture, like…”

“Like music for Harmonex?” Blaster suggested predictably, a warm smile on his face as he contemplated what was likely to be his favorite city on Cybertron.

“Exactly!” Bluestreak confirmed. “We use them…or, um, at least we did…use them for any number of things! Once when Praxus was still around, Prowl and I went to a performance where the actors communicated everything that was happening just by moving their doorwings! It was amazing! I was sure that at the very end, the lead actor would suddenly shout a line and make everybody jump, but it didn’t happen. Too bad it didn’t, because that would’ve been amazingly funny!”

 _C’mon, Prowl, you’ve gotta let go sometime,_ he thought to himself even as he chattered, wishing he could send that plea through the bond without Prowl feeling heated up or hurt by how it could be construed.

Bluestreak glanced at Blaster and was surprised at his vaguely frustrated expression. _Primus,_ Bluestreak cursed himself. _I tuned out and missed something important! Did they ask me a question and think I’m ignoring them? What did Blaster say? What did Prowl say? What did I miss?_

Prowl must have brought the subject back to the stupid problem again, as Blaster leaned far back against the wall behind him and said flatly, “I don’t really have much of an opinion.”

He must have been as tired of the conversation as Bluestreak was—or perhaps even more; he must have been dealing with talks like this all morning as he filtered through the other Bots’ communiques.

Thus, feeling slightly guilty for it, Bluestreak tuned out again, glancing around the room and finding it mostly empty. The last time this room had been full of people, there hadn’t been very good relations, Bluestreak recalled. Hopefully everyone would just get it out of their systems and put the disagreements to rest. It wasn’t their problem, so there was no reason to get worked up! It was the problem of the—

Bluestreak perked up when he noticed Bumblebee shuffling out of the energon stockroom at Prowl’s back, arms stacked high with energon cubes. He was slowly but steadily heading toward the door, barely sparing a glance at the Bots occupying the table. Bluestreak felt a stirring of worry which he held back so Prowl wouldn’t feel it. Hound had confessed to him on their shift together yesterday just how worried he was about the scout.

Just as the Spec. Ops. mech had said, Bluestreak noticed that Bumblebee looked…small, quiet, and he hadn’t even asked for help as he obviously struggled to carry all of the cubes. Come to think of it, where was he carrying them to?

 _The pace must be refueling in their room now, not wanting to be seen out where everybody’s waiting to attack them and ask questions_ , Bluestreak realized, frowning sadly. While this morning had been decent for him, he wasn’t sure he could imagine how Bee and his friends had felt when they came online, wondering if today was the day or if they could duck the pressure to choose just a little longer.

Turning his gaze away from Bee for a nanoklik, Bluestreak’s optics fell on an empty section of the circular bench, between himself and Blaster, just large enough for a Minibot. That could be a win-win, he mused excitedly. If he invited Bumblebee over to sit, Prowl would drop the discussion of the gestalt, Blaster would be free to relax, and Bumblebee may very well be drawn out of his gloomy type of shyness. A win-win- _win!_

Blaster had opened his mouth to try changing the subject with Prowl yet again and simultaneously Bluestreak opened his mouth to call to Bumblebee. Prowl beat them both to it, throwing up his hands and exclaiming, “Due to the tenseness of the entire combiner debate, there’s a perfectly reasonable solution that _no_ _one_ has mentioned!”

Resigning himself to his fate to discuss it, Blaster sighed, “What is it?”

Bluestreak swallowed hard as Prowl’s doorwings lifted triumphantly; whatever he was about to say, he was quite pleased that he’d thought of a third option.

“We simply disband the pace. If they aren’t together, they won’t combine but they’ll still have their singular abilities, which will continue to make them an asset—”

Bluestreak’s half of their spark seized as a sharp crash sounded from further out in the rec room. Prowl startled, turning to see Bumblebee backing away from the cybre-glass in the growing puddle of energon on the floor. The Minibot stared steadily at Prowl, paying no attention to the others, until he hit the doorframe and turned his wide optics on Bluestreak, who easily saw the betrayal in them before Bee whirled around and sped through the opening doors.

“Well, Prowl,” Blaster said heatedly, “I guess you can consider that idea mentioned.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *grabs Prowl's doorwings and uses them as leverage to pull him up from the table. promptly steers him into the nearby wall*
> 
> What's it gonna take for you to learn, Prowler? OPTIMUS PRIME chewed you out for this exact reason. Uuuugh, I hate writing Prowl like this, but it serves a purpose, so it must go on. It's all for the plot, I swear I'm not a Prowl hater..... D:


	18. Chapter 18

Bumblebee managed to fumble his way out of the rec room, limping slightly as little shards of energon cube glass crunched on the bottom of his feet. Even if that hadn’t been the case, he was still would have been reeling from what had been said so casually by a superior officer who, as far as Bumblebee knew, had always been tolerant of Culumexian customs, if not supportive.

Deliberately disband the pace?

The idea was so foreign to him, he had to repeat Prowl’s words in his processor over and over before their meaning finally sank in. They would no longer be a family; that’s what a pace was, that was what they had sworn by Primus to be.

Bumblebee halted his uneven steps and his train of thought there, dumping the energon cubes he still carried with him onto the floor. Leaning against the locked door of a nearby storage closet for support, he shuttered his optics and remembered the reverence and gratitude with which each member of the pace had taken their oaths. That day, their members who were most scarred or most troubled were the most joyous and the most loving. Rank in the pace they were making hadn’t mattered; they were all accepted by each other—and by themselves—for who they were.

As the youngest and the last to come into their lives, Bumblebee had been the lowest rank in the pace. Like the others, he didn’t care and hadn’t cared since; it was the life he’d known for as long as he could remember: Cliffjumper putting on a grudging expression whenever ‘the little guy’ asked for a ride on his back and then giving in anyway; Gears and Windcharger teasing him, taking it just a little too far and then discussing in anxious voices how to make it up to him when they thought he wasn’t listening; Huffer telling him stories before he recharged and knowing just how to make him worry for the characters’ fates, even if he already knew the ending; and Brawn, always watching to be sure he was alright and protecting him however he could if he found out he wasn’t.

He associated all safety, all hope, with them, even more so since the war broke out and he had realized he could no longer blindly trust. They were the ones he could lean on when everyone else betrayed them. Now the most unexpected of enemies were thinking to sweep that out from underneath him without a fight?

He would be orphaned. Not only that, but as far as he knew Prowl hadn’t intended to strip them of their Autobot status as well…That meant he would have to look at his Unraveled pace every day, work with them, fight with them, and they would always be out of his reach.

Bumblebee would admit he had been withdrawing from the other Autobots these past days. Ever since the first combining, he had felt that none of the right people were listening, so there wasn’t any need for just one more voice expressing what they believed should happen. Still and silent had been the best role for him to play.

“Not anymore,” he muttered, straightening and pushing himself away from the doors, no longer stumbling but storming down the hall. It was time to fight and scream and lash out, to prove that _their_ way was best for _them_ and if it wasn’t for anyone else, they didn’t even fraggin’ care.

 _But the Autobots are a team, your team_ , the more reasonable side of him pointed out.

 _Not if we’re threatening each other. Not if we’re_ killing _each other_ , the other side retorted icily. _That’s exactly what dissolving the pace would do; we will_ die _without each other! We are one and we’re going to stay that way, even if it means being a gestalt too!_

Even as vehement on these ideas as he was feeling, Bumblebee’s anger had changed to firm determination by the time he reached the pace’s quarters. He entered briskly, his EM field and his strand of their gestalt bond demanding acknowledgement. Their conversation ceased in the middle of Hauler’s sentence; even as an outsider to the bond, he could sense Bee had something to say and that it may not be good, judging by the lack of energon he had gone to acquire in the first place.

“We’re needed for a fight,” the scout announced tersely. Cliffjumper slid down from his berth, slower than he might have under normal circumstances but nevertheless willing to go for the door.

“Decepticons?” he questioned in a word, tapping the blaster on one hip.

Bumblebee shook his helm, almost wishing this could have been avoided. “Autobots.” At the startled expressions he was earning, he clenched his jaw, in-vented deeply and spit it out as quickly as possible, as though it burned his mouth too badly to hold it in: “They’re talking about Unraveling the pace.”

The reaction he received was not at all what he expected. This should have brought all of them to their feet, trying to shout over each other, protesting furiously that no one could separate them while their sparks were still running warm. When this failed to happen, the first one Bumblebee looked to was Cliffjumper, but he found nothing familiar there.

The warrior was frozen where he was as though he were one of Cybertron’s elusive shocker-stags, caught in Bee’s headlights. His optics were very wide and not their natural shade of blue—in fact, draining of color by the nanoklik. The realization took Bumblebee aback: _this is what Cliffjumper’s fear looks like_. Finally Cliff managed to shake himself free of his paralytic state, slumping against the edge of his berth and releasing the faintest of whimpers.

The others weren’t any better, Bee saw, worriedly studying each of them in turn. Gears couldn’t seem to lift his helm from where he’d bowed it over his hands, almost looking like he was mid-prayer but mostly just…defeated. Windcharger was physically withdrawing, curling into himself, his armor almost concaving, and he was looking anywhere but at the other mechs, optics flickering nonstop around the room as though expecting blaster barrels to emerge.

“We…need to t-talk to someone about this,” Bumblebee stammered agitatedly, still receiving the same reaction on a higher level. To them it must seem he was asking them to seek refuge among their enemies. When had the larger frames become their _enemies?_

Bumblebee’s dismay at observing them like this reached its peak when he met Brawn’s optics. Their leader had no more bravado, no mettle he could muster to bolster their spirits and now the scout could see what was happening underneath.

He was terrified now, even distraught. Again Bee was struck with the awareness of how sickening this reality was becoming. When he was in the hallway, considering how devastating it would be to him, he hadn’t remembered that the founder of their pace had already gone through it all. He had lost _everything_ he loved and now he was teetering on the edge of the same Pit he’d mastered.

Bumblebee’s optics turned to the last pace-mate: the first. Huffer was, predictably, looking to Brawn for direction or strength, but it wasn’t there. By the fear in his face, he was likely seeing all that Bee was seeing and he was the first to break the reverie because of it.

Slipping from his berth onto the floor, he nodded once and agreed, “You’re right, Bee. This is where it stops.” Approaching Brawn, he tugged lightly at his arm, coaxing, “C’mon, guys. We need to find an officer.”

Hauler audibly swallowed, offering quietly, “Do you want me to come with you?”

Huffer shook his helm gratefully, claiming with more confidence than he probably felt, “We’ll be fine.”

As Bumblebee scrolled through his comm. numbers, evaluating how trustworthy he could consider them, he wondered just what Huffer was feeling underneath the reassuring tones. Was it the same as Brawn? They had always been oddly in sync that way, but since Bumblebee wasn’t destined to be a One, he couldn’t assume he would understand.

Even if he could have assumed it, he wouldn’t be given the chance, as everyone had of their own volition retreated from the other strands of the bond. He could feel the tension, the hopelessness, and in turn he pulsed through to them his determination, his comfort, as small as it was. It was astonishing to him that it was big enough to get them all on their feet, ready to follow him for help. Miraculously Bee managed to smile at them before touching a hand to his audial.

“Jazz—” It was almost a delight to see every Bot in the room unwind at the name. “—we need to talk.”

“Oh, sure thing, Bee,” Jazz agreed from the other end, sounding thoughtful but not too surprised. “I’m not at the Help Desk in my office right now, but I’ll meet you there!”

It helped Bumblebee himself to relax as he listened to Jazz’s voice. He was always unfazed by whatever life threw; he was still able to be casual and comforting, behind his words assuring that he was willing to help.

“Thanks,” Bumblebee said at last. “See you soon.”

Though it was probably only three to five minutes, it seemed to the pace like diuns before Jazz arrived to meet them. He paused in the doorway, the light from his visor sweeping over each of them in turn, and then commented, “I suspected it’d be this kind of get-together.”

After a short pause he made his way through them and perched on his desk, loosely folding his arms and holding out a hand. “Anyone wanna speak first?”

Bumblebee did so, explaining everything that had happened since he’d entered the rec room. He spoke of how Prowl wouldn’t let the subject drop, reliving his own frustration as he’d overheard it, and made a point of saying that he didn’t blame the tactician for wanting to know a fleshed-out plan for the future so no one would proceed blindly. He did blame him, however, for his thoughtless and frankly irreverent view of their culture and the idea that he and other larger frames could ever separate them—

Jazz interrupted there, tilting his helm curiously. “What’re you talkin’ about, Bee? Are you sayin’ you want to keep the gestalt code?”

“I’m not even remotely talking about that,” Bee sighed exasperatedly. “I mean the pace! You officers are considering Unraveling our pace, aren’t you?!”

For a full minute Jazz gaped at him, a reaction that set Bumblebee more at ease. Apparently Prowl hadn’t mentioned this option to Jazz, which meant he likely hadn’t shared with the other officers either. Finally Jazz snapped his mouth shut and slid off his desk, crouching in front of them. In any other situation, they might have considered this a way of emphasizing how much smaller they were, a way of demeaning them, but this was Jazz, easily the kindest of the officers.

He took ahold of Bumblebee’s shoulders and his touch was warm, squeezing tightly. When he spoke, he was more solemn than any of them could remember seeing before. “Bumblebee…not all of us—but _enough_ of us—know better than to _ever_ try that.”

“Indeed,” Optimus agreed, causing all of them to jump and swivel around to find him at the doorway. “I doubt any of us could if we wanted to, despite our rank.”

As always he strode in with regal grace, but instead of reassuring them, the Minibots found themselves unnerved, put on edge by it. Come to think of it, they had never learned through gossip or outright statements what the Prime’s outlook on their problem was.

Jazz shifted back to his feet but kept one hand on Bumblebee’s shoulder. Bumblebee scoffed in a pedal tone, easily able to connect the dots. No doubt as soon as he and Jazz had ended their comm. conversation, Jazz had dialed Optimus and asked him to come to the meeting a few minutes after they got comfortable.

Much as Jazz had, Optimus scanned each member of the pace and when he reached Bumblebee, the scout met his gaze bravely, wordlessly asking for an explanation. Optimus didn’t seem willing to give it to him, but he did give something else. It wasn’t often that his speeches really held the Minibots’ attentions, but this one was distinctive.

“I haven’t shown it often enough,” the Prime admitted. “But I greatly respect you and everything you stand for—freedom, strength, bravery, creativity, loyalty. In whatever form, I value you as part of our team and family. I value everything unique you bring to us and I will gladly acknowledge that every day your way of functioning, your customs, find a new way to surprise me. Your pace has me in _awe_. The community, the closeness, the lifelong devotion you show is unique and I believe it’s what everyone should strive for. You didn’t need to be a gestalt for that and sometimes I even find myself longing for a pace of my own.”

Optimus chuckled a little at his own words, but it didn’t take away from the sincerity of it. “And then I remember that I already have one. If no one else is, _I’ll_ be here to support you, whatever you decide.” Venting deeply, he extended a hand to Brawn, palm out, fingers slightly bent, and announced ceremoniously, **::Yeib vereich pricren, iuow ēon wiyn cylie.::**

Stunned, Bumblebee faltered a few steps back, bumping into Windcharger, who clutched at his shoulder. The Prime— _their_ Prime—had just spoken in Culumexian! The intonation had been mildly shaky, indicating he had only just memorized the phrase, but that did nothing to take away from the humbling realization that a larger frame had spoken their home Tongue for the first time in their race’s history.

Bumblebee glanced at Brawn, whose mouth and optics were wide open in disbelief and wonder. He blinked several times, processing what had been said, and then took on an easily readable expression. _I’m overwhelmed. None of us are worthy of this. We’ve done nothing to deserve this._ But someone had to answer or their silence would be taken as a rebuttal.

At a nearly imperceptible nudge, Huffer moved from Brawn’s side, briefly touching his palm to the Prime’s, fingers weaving together. Bumblebee almost felt close to tears in this moment. He had been so angry, making all of the officers guilty by association. This was so much different than the outcome he had expected. This was a bonding ceremony—a sign of acceptance, gratitude, promise.

After a few kliks Huffer stepped back, swept a deep bow while still keeping his optics locked with Optimus’, and replied with the traditional response, **::Yeib vereich sovbilis, iuow ēon vures.::**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yeib vereich pricren, iuow ēon wiyn cylie: By everything sacred, you are my kin.  
> Yeib vereich sovbilis, iuow ēon vures: By everything supreme, you are ours.


	19. Chapter 19

“I just…can’t believe he would say that to us. He thinks of _us_ as his pace!” Bumblebee exclaimed for the third or fourth time.

Windcharger knew it was his way of ‘coping’ with the shock Prime had given all of them; though it was a good kind of shock, it had left them all searching for normality, as seemed to be the routine these days since their change.

“Well, of course he does,” Cliffjumper scoffed, readjusting on his berth so he was lying on his front, facing the youngest pace-mate. “None of the larger frames have pace customs, so who else would be?”

“But he spoke in Culumexian!” Gears burst out. “How in Primus’ name did he _learn_ it? Never in our history has a larger frame learned our language.”

“He’s Optimus Prime, that’s how! He can do anything he sets his processor to,” Bumblebee announced confidently.

Cliffjumper snickered, obviously in a much better mood than he had been before the talk. “Ahh, he probably memorized that one phrase, but what I know for sure is that _somebody’s_ a fan Bot now that Prime’s an honorary Culumexian.” He laughed even louder at Bumblebee’s indignant sputtering and then glanced at Windcharger expectantly. “Aw, c’mon, Charger, that was funny!”

Windcharger nodded his agreement inattentively before blinking, frowning a little and indicating vaguely the two empty berths among them. “What do you suppose they’re saying?”

Sobering, Cliffjumper sat up, swinging his legs off his berth and folding his arms. “They’re just doin’ their thing, Charger, where they go off and fret about problems behind closed doors. Well, Huffer frets, goes around in circles, and thinks up all the bad things that could happen and Brawn tries to shut him up so they can actually make a decision. But if you wanna know what they’re saying, let’s find out!” Scrambling to the floor, he quickly scurried toward the washroom door.

“CJ!” Gears scolded in a whisper. “You remember what happened the last time we did that?! If they catch you, you’re gonna be ripped a whole new set of plating!”

“I got it,” Windcharger assured him, stretching out a hand and activating his magnetism, latching onto Cliffjumper’s arm and stopping him mid-journey. Cliff gasped, tugging at his arm, digging in his heelstruts and hissing curses. Windcharger chuckled, giving him just a little bit of leash only to jerk him back as he got closer to the door.

“Now, see, _this_ is funny!” Bumblebee declared, grinning widely. Cliffjumper snapped something vulgar in their home Tongue at him and Bee just rolled his optics, clearly not taking him seriously.

“Charger—let— _go!_ ” Cliffjumper growled. Shrugging, Windcharger did so when he least expected, sending him flying with his own effort into the washroom door. He stumbled as it opened, caught before he fell by Brawn’s hands on his shoulders.

“Well, well,” Brawn greeted wryly. “What do we have here? A little listening bug!”

“For someone who wants to eavesdrop on us, you stomp around like a titanium moosebot! Besides, we didn’t even get very far,” Huffer agreed straightforwardly, leaning against the doorframe and planting a hand on the opposite hip.

Shrugging Brawn’s hands off, Cliffjumper mumbled something rather uncouth directed at a particular mech; he was content to blame Windcharger for his misfortune and if asked Windcharger would gladly take the blame. The sulk on Cliff’s face was worth it.

Since his fun had ended, Windcharger straightened, analyzing the strain hidden underneath Brawn and Huffer’s armor, which in this case wasn’t their frames but their talk. As usual, Huffer wasn’t managing the easygoing demeanor very well; the worry and stress were visible around his optics. Brawn was much more practiced at it: smiling, teasing Cliffjumper on his lack of agility, but he seemed…dimmer somehow.

Testily Windcharger worked on opening his end of their bond. It wasn’t something one could simply think of, it had to be _felt_ , and that was what made it hard for him in particular. He was too impatient to wait it out and feel it. This was a special case; he knew he needed to be patient in order to break down the masquerade hiding whatever their leader’s news was.

Finally he felt his spark unfurl, investigating where he could reach. Bumblebee perked up, glancing at him questioningly as though asking where he wanted to go. Upon Windcharger making a subtle move with his chin at their leader, Bee nodded obediently and took on an intent expression. Brawn stopped mid-sentence, his smile freezing a little with it, and Windcharger felt him shift with some discomfort at being probed.

“You want to know what we’ve decided,” Brawn answered their verbally unasked question. “The answer is that we haven’t. It’s not for us two to decide all of your fates.”

“Yeh, it is,” Cliffjumper argued. “You’re our leader. You’re his One.”

Huffer shrugged, but it went against his troubled face. “But we’ve made such a big deal of being a pace, so we have to decide together. As much as I hate it, Brawn told me it’s time to face the music, so…what do we do? Do we disband the gestalt and risk losing our powers…or do we keep the combining and risk losing our individuality?”

“What a way of putting it,” Gears muttered, but the sarcasm held a soft undertone.

Clenching his fists, Cliffjumper protested, “Our powers are _part_ of our individuality! If we get rid of the gestalt, we could lose them!”

“But that’s just a chance,” Bumblebee reminded him. “Without the combining, we’ll be… _ourselves_ again. And we’ll still be close, right? The bond never goes away.”

“So we’ve already lost that part of being ourselves,” Gears pointed out. “What, are we keeping the rest of it since we’re keeping the bond?”

With difficulty Windcharger swallowed, watching them go round and round, dancing around the problem while still not making a choice. He lowered his optics to his hands, folded in his lap, and squeezed them more tightly together. Their circling was just another way of coping, but he knew it wasn’t going to help anything. Pursing his lips, he rubbed his jaw where several days ago Cliffjumper had been punching him, blaming him for all of this trouble. Had it really been his fault? He still had no idea, but he did know that he had to do something about it.

 _I may not be the chest conduit, I may be just an arm, but I know they’ve been struggling with this,_ he admitted to himself. _Who knows if they’ll ever come to accept it like I have? And if_ I’m _still having trouble making a decision for or against combining, when I’ve been the one enjoying it, who knows how long it’ll take them?_

“You’re being awfully quiet, Windcharger,” Brawn recaptured his attention. Windcharger didn’t look up from his hands right away, but when he did he found all of them staring at him expectantly. He in-vented deeply and after five kliks released it, blinking away moisture behind his optics at what he was about to say. Somehow he managed to force it out, quiet but just enough to be heard.

“I’ll do it.”

Their reply was a collective blank look and then Bumblebee inquired slowly, “Do what, exactly…?”

His next sentence was even quieter. “I’ll give up my magnetism.” At their silence, he rushed onward, “I know you guys don’t like combining and worse than that, for most of you it’s been really difficult to _accept_ , so since I feel partially responsible for what happened on the battlefield with Megatron’s technology and my magnetics, I’ll give them up. I’m willing to do it for you.”

“Charger,” Cliffjumper began, looking more dismayed than the others, “I…I don’t blame you for that anymore. It was the coding we were given, it was—”

“I know, Cliff, I know,” Windcharger agreed, nodding forcefully and squeezing his hands until his mesh hurt from the plating pressing in on it. “But for centuries now we’ve been fine as a pace, not a gestalt, and since that’s what we were meant to be, since that—not the coding—is what drew us together, I’ll sacrifice my power. You’re the ones who make me strong and that’s what counts. I’m no less an Autobot if I don’t have an augmentation.”

Aside from their vents cycling the air, a long hush met his words. Just when Windcharger could feel them all wondering who would break the building ice, Gears cleared his throat.

“I, um, I’ll give up my compression bursts.” He fidgeted a little and kicked his feet, which at this moment held said bursts. “I…don’t really use ’em that often anyway.”

Somewhere during these words Cliffjumper was considering his own hands, seeming pained as he no doubt weighed the potential loss of his glass gas, but he didn’t get the chance to offer it up. Brawn reached over and pushed his hands back to his sides with one of his own.

“Maybe I can bear to lose a bit of…” He huffed, a regretful smile tugging at his lips. “…brawn. Like Charger said, I have you guys to back me up, although it’ll be a little odd to think _Huffer_ will be the strongest out of all of us—”

“Brawn, please,” Huffer pleaded, looking panicked at his leader’s reflections.

“Frag this!” Cliffjumper burst out savagely, waving his hands in the air as though to erase the words. “You—you can’t! None of you can! None of this is guaranteed! We need to stop focusing on what we might lose and think about what we’ve gained!” Banging a fist against his housing, he snapped, “We have a bond! That’s one thing we’ve gained!”

“And in a way, combining all of your powers makes Indomitus even stronger,” Bumblebee added in a small voice. “We have the power to beat Devastator and once we have more training, we could probably do it.”

As more ideas began cropping up, Windcharger and even the others could see that the pros and cons were quite evenly matched. “We could do what the larger frames suggested,” Huffer offered nervously. “Put it to a vote now?”

At the solemn nods, Brawn sighed deeply. “All in favor of surgery, potentially losing our powers, and completely losing Indomitus, raise your hands. Now all in favor of keeping our powers and forcing ourselves to accept Indomitus, which… _who_ none of us quite understand, raise your hands.”

The journey to the med bay seemed far longer than it ever had been, Windcharger mused as they strode solemnly in single file past the other Autobots. The larger frames openly stared, trying to read their faces and by the looks of it failing, as they heard whispered questions trailing in their path.

“Ratchet,” Brawn called out as the med bay doors opened. “We’ve made our decision.”

“Please hold your thoughts until I make my way out,” Prowl requested, sounding unusually uncomfortable as he started to move away from the medic, who tracked his swift movements toward the door and spoke bluntly just as he was about to escape.

“Brawn, you and your pace don’t have to worry. I’ve just been educating Prowl.”

The second-in-command halted just out of range of the doors sensors. “Indeed,” he agreed lightly, obviously trying not to sound aggravated. “On the complexities of a pace.” He pivoted, meeting their suspicious stances. Windcharger subtly dug a finger into a seam of Cliffjumper’s wrist, painfully forcing him to loosen the fist he was making.

“Is that so?” Brawn asked rhetorically.

Prowl nodded, shifting and not quite meeting their optics now. “He’s informed me of the psychological and emotional intricacies, how deeply the oaths run, how essential they are to your functioning. As he put it to me, breaking up a pace would be comparable to tearing off my doorwings.” At the very words he flattened said wings against his back, continuing in quieter tones, “I cannot expect you to understand a Praxian’s horror at such an idea, just as I didn’t understand your reaction to my very, _very_ foolish idea of separating you. But I can understand and respect how fierce you would be at protecting what is yours—”

“Will be,” Brawn cut in. “How fierce we _will_ be.”

Prowl paused, marginally inclining his helm. “Rest assured there will be no threat from me or other officers. I will respect your decision and help if you ask for it.” With that he briskly took his leave.

As soon as the doors closed behind their senior officer, Brawn pivoted toward the medic, but Ratchet held up a hand. “Hold that thought. I have another proposition for you.” At the despairing glances they shared, he smirked and assured them, “Oh, don’t worry, I think you’re going to like this one. It’s one that will spare any harm to both your powers _and_ Indomitus. With some help, I’ve just created a program that I can add onto your gestalt coding. Would you like to know what it does?”

“Enlighten us,” Windcharger pleaded.

“It will simply make it dormant again!” Ratchet stated proudly. “There’s no need for gestalt or power removal and you won’t be at risk to combine haphazardly, but if there ever comes an utmost need, you can simply choose to turn off the program and remerge.” Brawn opened his mouth to ask and Ratchet read his processor, adding, “The surgery only takes twenty minutes a mech, with a joor of sedated observation afterwards, but even so I’ll need to bring in the co-creator of the program so we can work briskly.”

“Who was it? Wheeljack? Perceptor?” Cliffjumper guessed, folding his arms to hide his obvious excitement at this new prospect.

Ratchet’s smile became wider. “Pacemaker.” Cliffjumper’s optics opened wide for several kliks and then narrowed. Ratchet’s mouth twisted in disapproval. “You’re Brawn’s pace and he knows that; he wanted to help, despite your accusations that he’s trying to take Brawn away from you or whatever you meant to imply. If you’ll accept it, he’s willing to continue his assistance.”

“Of course we’ll accept it,” Brawn announced firmly, easily meeting the incredulous, even angry looks of the others. “This is a decision I _am_ willing to make for you guys and I’m making it. He’s not to blame for what happened with my old pace and we’re not going to pretend that he is.”

“In that case,” Pacemaker announced his presence as he stepped out from behind the surgical curtains, “let’s get to work.”


	20. Chapter 20

Hauler’s impatient travel back and forth across the pace’s room was abruptly halted by a shot of pain down his left leg. He winced, bending down and examining it, finding nothing wrong with it, not even with a rapid mental diagnostic. Straightening, he limped toward Bumblebee’s berth and leaned against it, sighing deeply.

Since he’d gotten wind of the news that the Minibots were going to be having a procedure done, the joors which he’d spent in their room waiting for them had seemed like days. He had felt unnecessarily dragged back and forth between his room and theirs, but he knew why they had asked him to step out while they took the vote, so he didn’t blame them.

While waiting for them to return, he’d gone about cleaning up some of their quarters, matching up all of the belongings and their locations that he knew about; it wasn’t like his friends had been given much time for routine these days. After he’d done that, he’d gotten some supplies and thoroughly scrubbed their washroom. They hadn’t had very much time for relaxation either, so it would be waiting for them when they got back. It was a constructional itch in his coding that forced him to do these things; if he hadn’t, he was sure he would have gone insane from lack of activity.

He drew in his vents and leaned more heavily against the berth, waiting for the odd cramping in his leg to subside. It refused to relent but at least remained at a level rate instead of climbing. Was he imagining it? Was it some kind of phantom pain from an old injury and he simply wasn’t remembering the circumstances? Hauler searched his processor, but a sudden pain there made it harder to think.

Hissing, he pressed a hand to his forehelm and then pulled it back, searching for any sign of blood. He found nothing, much more distracted by the building anxiety in his chest. He was just concerned for his friends, he told himself firmly, but how could that explain…?

It was only when Hauler felt a sudden clutching at his spark that he realized what was happening. He shuttered his optics and pursed his lips tightly, mentally cursing the bond that had been forced on him so many centuries ago. He didn’t dare think of the circumstances, the terror and grief so unlike anything he’d felt before as they’d violated everything he knew about them. Instead he focused on the bond itself, recalling the instances when this had happened.

As if he hadn’t suffered enough because of the other Constructions; now they were projecting their pain onto him! It didn’t happen often, but when it did, it always managed to catch him off guard. _I should know better by now,_ he rebuked himself, feeling anger and intense stress and vulnerability and fear—all at something he couldn’t see. Just how badly had they been wounded?

Not long afterward, however, the tension in his chest began to slacken, leaving him feeling slightly groggy and swallowing by reflex, imagining fluid traveling his intake valve. “Mixmaster,” he muttered ruefully, unsure if he should be thankful or concerned about whatever the chemist had put in his brew.

It was then that the door slid open, startling him and reminding him where he was and for what purpose. “Brawn,” he called out in relief as the leader appeared, followed by the others. “How are you feeling?”

“Tired,” was Brawn’s short response. When he noticed Hauler raising an eyebrow, he added, “but good. Kinda content. Actually, like myself again—myself before I was, y’know, my _other_ self.”

Hauler forced a laugh at that, still trying to cordon off his faint end of the bond which currently was feeling all too strong. “And the rest of you?” he prompted, looking each of them up and down, searching for any visible difference. The rigidity of them had lessened and they all had some variant of a smile, whatever suited their face best. They seemed just as Brawn had observed: content.

“What about the bond?”

All optics turned to Bumblebee, who shrugged one shoulder and knocked lightly on his chest, followed a short two kliks afterward by the other Minibots shifting and rolling their optics, Huffer of all mechs muttering something about the scout being ‘too needy’.

“Still there,” Bumblebee announced unnecessarily, to Hauler’s amusement. “Ratchet says to look on the bright side and think about how effective it’ll make us as a unit and I believe him!”

“Communicating on the battlefield’ll be a lot faster,” Windcharger agreed. “We can just pop a message through the bond instead of shouting our plans for Megatron to catch on.”

“And plans for revenge on Sides’ and Sunny’s pranks will always be private,” Huffer admitted, a frequent victim of said pranks.

Now that they were starting to regain their natural temperaments, they didn’t want to get into what they called ‘mushy stuff’. None of them would admit that they would come to understand each other even better than they already did, Hauler mused. A bond wasn’t just for privacy; it was for intimacy. At that idea the faint strand of his bond ached and he quickly ended that subject.

“Well, that’s good to hear,” he concluded, making sure his tone was warm. “You should get some rest; the new coding will be a lot more noticeable when you’re more alert, and…” He lowered his voice a few notches, making a subtle gesture with his helm. “Cliffjumper looks like he’s about to fall off his feet.” Indeed he did, alternatively leaning against Bumblebee and Gears so he could stay upright and blinking sluggishly as though just realizing their surroundings had changed.

Brawn glanced over his shoulder and laughed. “Yeh, he was the last one to be brought outta sedation.” So saying, he grabbed the swaying warrior’s arm and steered him toward his berth, hoisting him up and tossing a thermal tarp over him before returning to the others.

Hauler was pleased to see the pace-leader caring for his mates again. It was a familiar sight—his hands securely on their shoulders, as though affirming their wellbeing, before nudging them toward their berths like a protective sire guiding his herd of tired sparklings.

Scrapper might have been like that once in another galaxy, before he was remade. Hauler recalled him, much like Brawn, taking the time for each of them and making sure they all reached whatever they were meant to, affirming them along the way.

Before those thoughts could really cement themselves, Hauler found his attention recalled by Gears, who had latched onto his arm instead of giving in to Brawn’s direction toward rest. “Hey. Maybe it’s Bumblebee messing with my spark or maybe I’m just in tune with my touchy-feely side—which, yes, I have one—but I’ve got a feeling that something’s the matter.”

That made the rest of the pace perk up, wondering what on Cybertron could be wrong now that they were back to normal.

“Well, I—it’s been a long week,” Hauler answered weakly. “And I’ve just been worried for you guys and…w-well, you must be tired, so I—” His stammering was only embarrassing him, he realized, snapping his mouth shut until he could come up with the words. “Do you…remember how bonds never separate? How I told you my bond with the Constructicons is still active?”

Hauler watched them realize what exactly that implied—that he felt their pain, the pain _they_ had caused. He wasn’t trying to make them feel guilt for what they had done to Devastator; he was a Decepticon, he was evil and he had to be stopped. Even so, they were very much like larger frames in the fact that they never liked to see a friend suffer.

“Um, do you wanna…do something?” Brawn questioned hopefully, obviously trying to distract him. “I don’t really need to rest; I need to train so I can remember how to fight on my own.”

“Or we can go over to the paintball range,” Bumblebee piped up, getting into the spirit of it and starting to kick off his thermal tarps. “I hear it’s a blast, literally!”

Despite what they said, Hauler had no doubt that they were tired. For their sake he decided to let them off the hook. “Actually, I think I have someplace to be right about now. You guys rest and I’ll check in on you later, okay?” Noting Brawn’s troubled expression, Hauler held up a hand. “Hey, I’ll be fine. Hook is probably treating their injuries right now, cos the pain is easing. It’ll be alright. You don’t need to worry.”

It was just a small lie, but it felt larger than it was due to the pain ripping into his chest in particular. Of all mechs, it seemed Hook was the only one who hadn’t received Mixmaster’s special fuel. Perhaps he hadn’t been conscious to take it…In any case, Hauler took his leave of the Minibots once Brawn reluctantly nodded.

“I’m glad you’re back to normal, Brawn,” he whispered as he backed toward the door. The others were already slipping into recharge, knowing their leader was watching over them.

Brawn nodded, readjusting Huffer’s tarp as it threatened to slide off his shoulder and then pivoting to look at him, his expression unusually contemplative. “Me too,” he murmured at last. “At least, as normal as we _can_ be.”

Hauler reacted to Brawn’s sheepish smile with one of his own before making his way out, thinking over everything that had happened over the past…was it a week? More? He couldn’t tell and didn’t think it mattered enough to check.

When he entered the holodeck, Hauler was sure it was just as dark as always, but it seemed a bit brighter than usual, as though it had either miraculously sensed his mood and was trying to cheer him or it just been used. He paid it no mind, starting it up once more. “Access Memory Core: Road Hauler. Private Code: Autonomous Maximus 8412.”

When the Chrystal City began to shine, Hauler lifted his vocals, spontaneously calling out, “Hello? Are you here?”

“Why wouldn’t we be?”

Hauler twisted around to find Scrapper, arms folded, leaning forward curiously. Hauler ex-vented lightly, comforted by the sight. “I don’t know. I just thought I’d ask; it took you longer to come this time.”

“It’s not as if we would _leave_ you,” Hook scoffed, rising imperiously beside Hauler. “That would be rather counterproductive.”

“Not to mention despicable,” Hauler added unthinkingly.

Mixmaster nudged Hauler’s shoulder with his own at the words, remarking, “From the sound of your vocals, that tasted pretty bitter!”

Hauler glanced down at the floor, shrugging. “I’m not bitter with you, just some other mechs I’m…frustrated with.”

“Point me in the right direction then,” Bonecrusher offered, doubling his fists and shifting as if stretching for a fight.

Pointedly not indulging this idea, Hauler asked, “Are you…feeling alright? All of you?”

“Oh, I’m great!” Scavenger exclaimed, his program extrapolating as he added, “I’ve been finding all sorts of interesting things in what Hook discards while he’s building!”

“We’re just fine, Roady. No need to worry—except maybe about Scav, he’s building up a hoard,” Scrapper interrupted bluntly, ignoring the glare he received from said hoarder in favor of the smile from Hauler.

“Good,” the Autobot said softly. “I knew you would be. You…always have each other.”

“Hauler!” another voice startled him, sounding surprised itself. He whirled, causing Hound to wave hesitantly. “Hi. Sorry if we startled you, but we were just performing some maintenance and testing the program.”

“We?” Hauler started to ask, but Scrapper interrupted, his visor kindling light with his excitement. “What program would that be? Is it an encryption program against hacking? I’ve been working on one of those; we could compare sources!”

Hauler wondered what exactly Hound might think of his holograms, if he judged him for his choice of character, but Hound seemed completely unfazed by the fact that the Constructicons were standing in the _Ark_. “Actually it’s not, but my friend Red Alert is a master at programs like those,” Hound answered, as though having an honest conversation. “Maybe I’ll introduce you sometime. But in the meantime, these are my friends Mirage and Trailbreaker.”

The two poked their faces into the open doorway, Trailbreaker waving cheerfully. Hauler’s disbelief at their calm demeanors was growing; they seemed perfectly alright with this. With _him_ and his obvious problems. He had to have problems, to think up holograms like these! Didn’t they see that?

Hound continued smiling, studying each of the holograms in turn and—what, admiring their accuracy? Hauler couldn’t read his face behind that grin, which then turned toward him. “But I suppose the program can wait awhile. We were about to take a break and head to a waterfall we know about. If you want, you could come with us…?”

Blinking away his surprise, Hauler glanced at the holograms, who were watching him as though they expected him to jump at the chance. And it would be a study of nature’s architecture…

“Alright,” he agreed at last. “Let’s go.”

Hound positively beamed, clapping him on the shoulder and walking him to the door much as Brawn had to his pace-mates. At that idea, the oddest of thoughts occurred to him: _These three…they asked me to help them on their private program. They’re letting me join them on their private outings. Are they accepting me into their group, into their…pace? Is this starting to become a pace of my own?_

Maybe he was jumping to conclusions, but there was only one way to find out.

“Aren’t you forgetting something?” Trailbreaker reminded him. Hauler paused just inside the door, glancing at Hound’s hand on his shoulder and then back at the Constructicons, waiting patiently, looking proud of him.

“Yeah,” he admitted at last. “Teletraan One, end access.” He turned swiftly away, keeping his optics fixed on the other three Autobots as the lights behind him went dark.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope you've enjoyed this now-fully filled challenge! Many thanks to all of my readers and especially to those loyal commenters who have critiqued, pointed out typos, or just boosted my spirits with compliments. You know who you are ;)
> 
> And stay tuned! I'm sure I have another Minibot story lurking around in my mind; I'm just waiting for all the components to merge....

**Author's Note:**

> Challenge: pick a character with only one alt mode. That character is now a triple changer/combiner. Write a fic that explores how it happened, and how the character and the people around them react.
> 
>  
> 
> Yeah, I picked _six _characters, sorry. I do hope you enjoyed! Please comment and tell me what you think__


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